


Just the Two of Us

by Cheloya



Category: Pet Shop of Horrors
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 17:36:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 49,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15690159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheloya/pseuds/Cheloya
Summary: Old, imported.The only thing keeping D from his son was his father, and now that's not a problem any more.It's Vesca Howell's problem instead.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [howlingmoonrise (TheDarkStoryteller)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkStoryteller/gifts), [Feather_Qwill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feather_Qwill/gifts).



> Largely inspired by the Tori Amos cover of "'97 Bonnie and Clyde", and written in a frenzy during NaNoWriMo about a decade ago.
> 
> This isn't finished, it isn't edited, and it's probably not going to be, because I told myself that getting F&F done was the last fic I would work on before I had some of my own fiction published -- but you've all seen how well that works for me, so maybe one day.
> 
> Dedicated to my long ago writing seme, featherqwill, and to howlingmoonrise for reminding me this existed and asking about it.

This is how it began:

Cold air circulating in a lab bereft of life. Paperwork, neat, but abandoned. Not so much as a swirling signature (and years later, Vesca is sure, not even so much as a fingerprint) on a bequeathal. An empty lab, and an empty labcoat, draped across the back of a chair.

He never had a name tag.

 

This is how it ended:

Extinction.

But that is the way it was always going to end, and nothing we do in our lives can ever change that. It was always destined to end that way, sooner or later.

 

In this case, it was later. And so, this is how it went.


	2. Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last thing Vesca thought he expected was for Dee turn up on his door.
> 
> The actual last thing he expects is for Dee to turn up with a baby.

To be honest, it was the last thing that Vesca was expecting. It had been years, after all – years, and cities, and to a certain extent, careers. He was in forensic analysis now – not exactly where he’d planned on being when he left SUNY, but somewhere he felt a little more comfortable about being in a lab. He couldn’t see a DNA strand without remembering violet eyes, and it was a damn good thing he’d managed to avoid all the coastal cases, because he still couldn’t hear waves without having nightmares. He still couldn’t sleep through rain, for fuck’s sake, and that was just ridiculous, because for the first twenty years of his life, that had been one of the only things that could get him to sleep.

It was the last thing he’d been expecting, but given the circumstances, he should probably have factored Dee into normal human behaviour, and come out expecting it anyway.

Even then, he wasn’t sure it would have helped.

“What the hell,” he breathed when he opened his door, and then, “Dee...?”

He hadn’t changed a bit. That was his first thought. But then he really looked, and his mind started cataloguing all the little differences – the posture, the tension, the slightly mad roundness to his eyes, the—the fucking baby. There was. He had a.

Jesus Christ.

He must have been gaping like a fish, because the smile Dee tried on was almost what it should have been in that circumstance: wry, mocking, fond. “Ah, Mr University Student. I don’t suppose you would consider taking my bag.”

There was a moment where he started to bend, his mind still used to listening to Dee’s every word, still used to the other man knowing exactly what he was doing, and keeping everything under control. Then there was a moment where his mind rebelled, denying Dee’s power over him, denying Dee’s right to ask such a simple thing, denying Dee completely.

There was a moment where Vesca simply stared, frozen and wide-eyed, at the tiny, dark-haired child, and couldn’t think of anything to say except, “You have a baby.”

It came out as small and shocked as he felt, and Dee’s lower lip trembled for an instant before his usual bland smile took the tremor’s place.

“Yes,” he said. “I have a son, Vesca. Please will you take my bag, before I drop him.”

Vesca ducked forward to take a tattered suitcase from Dee’s right hand, trying hard not to notice how red and blotched that hand was from carrying it, and stood back to let Dee into the apartment. The right hand went immediately to the back of the child’s head. Long nails curved delicately over thick, dark hair. Vesca didn’t need to be observant to see the fingers shaking.

He dumped the suitcase by the kitchen bench, looked up to find Dee still standing in the middle of the room, head bowed over his baby, and felt a little of the shock dissipate. As was usual around Dee, it was channelled immediately into irritation. “Jesus, Dee, sit down, will you? The couch isn’t going to kill you.”

It was out of his mouth before he thought about it, and before he realised what was funny, Dee was laughing. Not the good laughing, though, or even the genteel titters that usually preceded a snide remark and a sense of intense humiliation (in Vesca). Little bubbles of laughter that sounded a lot more like sobs. Vesca stood at the end of his kitchen bench and stared as Dee hunched forward over his child with that same right hand pressed against his mouth in an attempt to choke the sound, long nails digging into his own cheek with none of the gentleness he’d shown the baby.

Before he could think about what he was doing, Vesca had grabbed the wrist, prised the hand away from Dee’s face. He was about two seconds away from grabbing the baby, because clearly Dee really was a lunatic if he was laughing like that, but the second he’d thought about it, there was a sudden sharp prickle at his Adam’s apple and the prickle was Dee’s nails and Jesus, the look in his eyes, it was—

“Don’t touch him,” Dee said, eerily, icily calm. His pupils were dark pinpricks in the violet of his irises. “If you take him from me, I will kill you.” A tremor shook him, and for a moment his lips curved and his expression slipped back toward that unhinge giggling fit, but he steadied himself, and the pads of his fingertips grazed Vesca’s throat as he removed his claw-like nails from the equation. “I would be terribly sad, Mr University Student, if you made me do that to you, as well.”

“As well?” It was out of his mouth before he could help himself. Dee’s face didn’t change, and his palm against the front of Vesca’s throat didn’t move. Jesus, Vesca thought, a little giddily, and then said, “I’m making coffee. Tea. I’m. I’ll make tea. Four sugars.”

Dee’s hand tightened fractionally, and Vesca stiffened, but in a moment the pressure was gone, and Dee was looking reasonably calm and unreasonably exhausted. “That would be,” he said, leaning carefully backward, right hand guarding his son against any jolts the movement might cause. He fell silent for a moment, stroking the dark hair, and then remembered himself, started again. “If you would, Mr University Student,” he finished, soft and uncertain.

Vesca stood. Mechanically walked to the kitchen, filled two mugs with water, sat them in the microwave, and pressed ‘auto’. Walked to his pantry to avoid going back to the couch, wondered why he had ever thought it was a good idea to never eat sweet things ever again, wondered if he had any please god any ice cream to stave off the serial fucking killer in his living room, and latched onto some gum on the off chance that Dee still thought mint was the best thing on the fucking planet. Nearly dropped it again when he heard the microwave beep.

Told himself to get a fucking grip, and started rattling around the cupboards for teabags that Dee wouldn’t sniff at, before a second spike of the typical Dee-inflicted irritation made him decide that Dee was lucky he wasn’t serving him goddamn long black coffee, unsugared, because Vesca hardly ever took sugar in anything. Dunked, added about two tablespoons of honey to Dee’s, and dithered for a few seconds about milk before deciding it was better not to chance it, what with the hours he’d been working lately.

Walked carefully back to the couch to find Dee’s eyes closed, hands lax, face as open as he’d ever seen it.

Vesca sat down on his coffee table, set Dee’s tea down beside him as softly as he could, and stared for a long time until Dee’s brow furrowed, and he held out his hand expectantly. Vesca looked between the delicate fingers and the steam furling up from the mug beside him and said, “Uh, no. You’re not meant to take hot stuff anywhere near kids, Dee, no matter how careful you think you are.”

Dee’s eyes opened fully, and for a moment he stared at Vesca as though convinced he had been hearing things. On seeing Vesca’s expression, however, he gave the hand a conciliatory flap and closed his eyes again. “Leave it there, then,” he said, and sounded so tired when he did so that Vesca immediately started to regret his insistence—which was, which was fucking stupid. What the hell was wrong with him?

“You planning on telling me—” he said, and then stopped, because he couldn’t quite work out which question to ask first. Why the hell Dee had disappeared five years ago, where the hell he’d gone. Why the hell Vesca had found a cold case involving a Count D and eighteen different states and thirty-eight different countries and God only knew how many corpses. Dee opened his eyes again, slitted them, really, as though he was mentally prepared to do as Vesca had asked, but his body was not quite up to the task. And so the next sound Vesca made was a slightly guilty hum. “You want to, uh. I have a bed here, if you want to lie down properly.”

Dee’s eyes slit open again, and for a moment a real smile flitted across his face, sad and terrible.

“I’m sorry, Mr University Student. I did not mean to... but, unfortunately, there was no other option. I have...” His face returned to that careful blankness, right hand stroking his son’s dark absently, and Vesca struggled with himself for a few seconds before replying.

“It’s Mr FBI now, actually.” And while he watched Dee’s face rearrange itself into an appropriate expression, he stood and offered the Chinese a hand. “C’mon. An actual bed. That couch is no good for the spine. I should know.”

The bedroom is smaller than it should be, maybe, but the bed is a decent size; big enough for two, and three at a stretch. Not that Vesca’s planning to lie down on it at the moment, because Dee and a new baby and him, that’d be a bit too—yeah. But at least he’s always been neat enough, and he can prove it to Dee now that he’s not living with slobs in his goddamn university dormitories, and he still can’t quite believe that this is happening.

“I’ll bring your case,” he says. “Uh.”

Dee looks small and tired on his mattress, settling his son with a tenderness that Vesca has never seen in another man, not without scoffing loudly, but he doesn’t feel like scoffing. There is something warm and raw under his ribcage and this is possibly the weirdest thing that has ever happened to him, including the birdwomen, so he makes an indistinct glottal noise again and just leaves the goddamn room before he can make even more of an idiot of himself, despite the fact that it’s been five goddamn years and hasn’t he grown up at all? Christ.

When he returns, Dee is on his side, right hand curled beside his face, left resting against his baby.

The baby appears to be surrounded by flowers.

Vesca puts down the case as quietly as he can and decides that he will write a note, and that note will say he has gone drinking.

He will actually go drinking a lot.


	3. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Very little has changed, but what has is surprising.

He returned a few hours later, not half as drunk as he wanted to be, but still pretty sure that whatever he thought had happened this afternoon had been some crazy hallucination brought on my too much work and too much coffee, or maybe not enough, given the sleep he’d been getting. By the time he managed to get his key lined up with the lock on the door he was half convinced that there would be no one in the apartment, as usual, and that he was just relapsing like a moron, as usual, and that clearly he needed to apply for more case work if his mind still had time to skip back to college like it had nothing better to do.

And then he heard the baby.

The sound startled him enough that he let the door close a little more loudly than he usually would have done; on most days, he’d have a splitting headache by now, so slamming his front door would have been completely counter-productive. The baby’s voice halted at the sound, and a curious pause hovered in the air for a moment before Dee’s voice filled the silence. “Welcome home, Mr FBI.” He didn’t sound particularly impressed, but he’d never been particularly impressed when Vesca drank, and, he figured, hell if that was likely to change now.

“You’re here,” he said as he rounded the corner to find Dee in the kitchen, baby on a non-existant hip. Frowning. “I’m not hallucinating. You’re actually here.”

The frown wavered. But only slightly. “You are not hallucinating,” he confirmed. “I am actually here. What is not here is... anything capable of supporting existence. How do you live without food, Vesca?” He sounded an honest mix of bewildered and disgusted. “Five years, and you have not yet outgrown the student tendency toward fast food? I’m afraid I have overestimated the standards required of the Bureau.”

Vesca’s teeth grit. “I’m not home enough,” he said shortly. “You’re lucky I was home at all yesterday, because normally I’d be up to my ears in potentially deadly bacteria. What... the hell... are you doing here. And don’t,” he added, seeing Dee’s mouth open, “say a damn thing about language, or I will personally kick you out on your ass.”

Which was bullshit, but probably not bullshit Dee cared to test.

They glowered at each other for a moment, in which Dee closed his mouth and looked as though he would rather like to use Vesca’s brand of language, himself. But then the baby’s tiny hand planted itself on Dee’s cheek, and the baby gave a short, satisfied bark of sound, and Dee was suddenly distracted, violet eyes crinkling at their edges, his expression growing almost unconsciously lighter. Vesca sat down on the arm of his couch, watching, uncomfortably aware of how hungry his gaze must be, and unable to do anything about it. That Dee could smile like that at anyone... that he was that open with anyone... without even thinking about it, that was...

“I do owe you an explanation,” Dee said, ostensibly to the baby, two fingers drawing swirls in the air before the infant’s face. “But I’m afraid, Vesca, that I must impose upon you for some food. My son is hungry, and I have not the blood to spare, just now, to feed him.”

Vesca was halfway to his feet, pressing the heel of his hands into his eyes, before his brain caught up with his ears and he gaped at Dee. He couldn’t possibly have heard that right. “Did you just. You didn’t just.”

“I did just,” Dee returned, irritably. “Vesca. You will get your explanations. Please bring me food. Once he is catered for, I will be more than happy to answer your questions.”

“All of them?” Vesca asked, and didn’t miss the guarded expression that crept across Dee’s face.

“I will answer your questions,” he agreed after a moment. His face was uncommonly serious. The smirk had all but vanished. “You may not like the answers, Mr FBI.”

“Any answer’s better than nothing.” Vesca patted his pockets. Wallet. Keys. Great. He paused at the counter, one hand hovering next to the phone. “You, uh. Got any preferences?”

“Meat,” Dee said, and Vesca stopped. Stared.

“But you—” he said, and Dee raised a hand, palm flat, shaking his head slightly.

“Vesca.” His pupils were small again, and his eyes looked even more blank than usual because of it. “My child requires my blood. So I require the blood of something else. Please bring back meat. Raw meat,” he added, and Vesca felt his stomach clench.

“I am going to not think about this all the way to the store and back,” he said. “And then you are going to tell me what the hell is going on. Deal?”

“I have agreed to it already,” Dee snapped, nails curling against his palm as the hand dropped to his side. Vesca glared at him, puffed his cheeks and made a ‘puh’ sound as he expelled it.

“Right.” He turned and stalked down the hall. “Meat, then. Make yourself at home, then, Dee. Oh, forgot—you did already.”

He didn’t slam the door behind him. Closing it gently on Dee’s silence was infinitely more satisfying.

*

The apartment was a lot louder by the time he got back, and Vesca was sort of glad he’d had the foresight to grab ice cream as well as raw meat, because from the look on Dee’s face it was the only thing saving him from a verbal beating.

Icecream and a headache, at least. The kid might be tiny, but it sure as hell had some lungs.

“Am I doing anything with this?” he asked over the siren wail as he hastened down the hall and slung his purchases across the bench, already ripping apart the butcher’s paper package. “Or are you just eating it as is?”

“Cutlery,” Dee said, masterfully attempting to distract the infact with tantalising handfuls of his hair, and failing. “And five minutes of your hands, please, Mr FBI.”

Vesca nearly dropped the steak. “Hands?” he asked blankly, all motion halting for a moment, and Dee gave him a look of what Vesca thought was undeserved fury.

“I cannot eat and hold him at the same time, Vesca,” he snapped. “If you wouldn’t mind, it would be terribly helpful of you if you would sit with him for a few moments while I humiliate myself by ingesting a large amount of cow flesh in a very short period of time.”

Vesca dropped the steak on a plate with a wet splat. “Hold your fucking horses, I’m going as fast as I can. You do know you’re probably going to die of food poisoning, right?” He rattled briefly for cutlery, came up with two forks and a teaspoon, and decided he should probably stop eating takeout quite so often after all, if he’d been here for three months and he didn’t even have a steak knife. “You’re gonna have to use your hands. Or this.” He waved a carving knife, and Dee sniffed as primly as it was possibly to sniff, when you had a baby yanking your hair back and forth while it yelled its tiny lungs out.

“My hands will serve.” He winced, and as soon as the plate was set down, started trying to prise his son’s fingers open. After a few seconds, Vesca leaned in to help. Dee’s nails were not conducive to handling children gently, he was pretty sure. Dee gave him a slightly startled look, pupils dilating briefly to something approaching their usual size, and his hands stilled. He looked almost... wary.

Vesca’s expression was of undisguised disgust.

“I’m not gonna throw him off the fucking balcony, all right? Hand him over and eat your goddamn cow flesh before his lungs collapse.”

It still took a few moments for Dee to sit slightly straighter, rearrange his baby’s limbs enough to lift him in Vesca’s direction. The kid was still yelling when Vesca tucked it in against his side, still yelling when he stood up and started to pace with it, while Dee dragged the plate closer. It was still yelling as he started to mutter to it, but as his voice rose back to a normal speaking level, as he started lilting his paces slightly to match the rhythm of his words, the yells changed slightly. Vesca grinned. He knew having three bratty little siblings had to count for something.

“There we go,” he crooned. “Daddy’s just eating his dinner, nice big pile of cow flesh, not that you know what that is, and then we’ll get right on to you, huh?” The baby stuffed a tiny fist in its mouth, bicoloured eyes huge and wet. Its tiny body shuddered with a hiccupping sob. Vesca eased the bounce in his step back to a slight sway, foot to foot, kid cradled in his left arm, right hand thudding gently at its backside. “You sure are cuter when you’re quiet, you know that? Daddy hasn’t even told me what your name is yet. Or how old you are, come to that.” He made a face, hoping for a giggle, and got a blank, wide-eyed stare instead. Yep. Definitely D’s kid. As though the purple eye wasn’t hint enough.

He rotated slowly on the spot until he was facing Dee again, relatively pleased with himself, and found that Dee was staring at him. Half the steak was gone already, and D’s chin was was covered in sticky rust-red. His hands weren’t much better. He was leaning forward over his plate, steak dangling from his fingertips, a strange expression on his face. Vesca raised his eyebrows.

“What’s up?”

Dee swallowed. Licked his lips. It was not a nervous gesture. The steak touched down on the plate for a moment, and a pool of gore began to spread around it. Vesca resisted the urge to comment on Dee’s table manners. It was the only chance he’d get, but more than likely Dee would try to kill him for it.

Way more than likely, if he’d been telling the truth earlier.

“Dee?” he prompted instead, and the Chinese gave him a long look. His eyes dropped again to his plate before he spoke again.

“I had not pegged you for a family man, Mr FBI.”

Vesca snorted. “That just proves you never listened to a damn word I said. I must’ve told you ten times about my little brothers and sister…” He waved a finger temptingly just before the baby’s nose.

“Yes,” Dee said, smirking. The blood discolouring his skin made the expression a good deal more ominous even than it usually was. “As I recall, one of them had crashed your car at the time. Perhaps I should have realised that your feelings at that time were not indicative of your feelings toward children in general.”

Vesca snorted. He did remember something of the sort. It was a good car, too. His first. He knew from the second he tossed Paul the keys the car was in trouble, but he’d had his Honda by then, so he hadn’t spared too much thought on the old bomb until it’d been crumpled metal and broken glass. At least Paul had been okay, though he’d been pretty ready to throttle the kid at the time.

“Siblings aren’t the same as kids,” Vesca said. “I like kids. I don’t want them, but I like them.” He jerked his chin at Dee, still hovering his fingers in incomprehensible patterns above the baby’s face. “You done with that? This isn’t gonna distract him forever.”

“Mmm,” Dee agreed, ducking his head again to resume his meal. He didn’t even flinch. Vesca was pretty sure he’d never eaten raw meat – or even cooked meat – in college. But the look on Dee’s face, with blood all over his chin... well, he wasn’t about to question it just now, that was for sure. He went back to distracting the baby, jigging up and down on the spot and wishing absently (as he usually did when he was forced to handle children) that he had hips enough to rest the kid against. Men just weren’t made for this stuff. He couldn’t imagine Dee was comfortable, either. No wonder the kid had been wailing five minutes ago. At least Vesca had a little meat on him, spare as it was.

Eating as indelicately as he currently was, it didn't take Dee long to finish the steak. He wiped his fingers meticulously on the cloth Vesca had brought to the table with him and stood. Vesca turned toward him, expecting the Chinese to take the child away from him for feeding purposes, but instead Dee strode toward the ktichen. He retrieved the knife that Vesca had left on the benchtop, long and thin and sharp, very sharp, because on the rare occasions that he cooked, Vesca hated to use a blunt knife.

Before Vesca could think about stopping him, Dee ran his palm firmly along the blade.

He must have made some kind of sound, because Dee glanced up at him in surprise, as though he had only just remembered that Vesca was, in fact, there. He beckoned with his free hand, while the blood ran unchecked down his bare forearm, seeping into the cloth at his elbow, dripping onto the tiles of Vesca's kitchen. The look on Vesca's face must've been something else, because the next thing he knew, Dee was laughing, and beckoning him closer, more firmly.

"My dear agent," he said coyly. "Don't tell me you have never seen blood before? In your line of work? How peculiar. I could have sworn that we worked with it together less than a decade ago." His jovial tone vanished when Vesca didn't move towards him. "Vesca, you are wasting time. Please bring me my son."

"You're not," Vesca breathed, but the baby was watching his father with the intense focus of the very, very young, and Vesca had the distinct impression that the child knew exactly what was coming. He started to squirm.

"Don't touch the blood," Dee warned as Vesca moved close. "It's fine for him, but for you it could be deadly. There are many secrets in our blood that I have not had the time to discover, but that, at least, I can warn you of ahead of time."

Vesca skirted the growing dark patch on his floor, watching it warily as, before his eyes, strange flowers started to sprout - presumably from the mould or whatever that had been embedded in the grouting. Vesca made a distracted mental note to bleach the living hell out of his kitchen at the next available opportunity, mildly horrified by the sight of the blood disappearing as flowers bloomed.

Dee held his bloodied hand far away over the bench as he pressed close to take the baby, but as soon as Vesca was out of the way, he brought the gash to the baby's face. Vesca watched, perversely fascinated, as the child's eyes closed blissfully, its eager mewlings giving way to contentment as it fastened its small red mouth around the small red wound in the heel of Dee's hand. For the first time since he'd returned from his trip to the bar, the apartment was completely silent.

"That," Vesca breathed, "is some fucked up shit."

Dee smiled at him through lowered lashes, turning so that he could lean against Vesca's kitchen bench.

"Language, Mr FBI."

*

The wound healed within seconds of the baby removing its mouth, and once its face and hands were attentively removed of their gorey coating, Vesca was once more entrusted with the child. Dee seemed insistent on cleaning up the blood by himself, even though most of it had turned into flowers and mushrooms. Vesca had never wanted to clean his kitchen so badly in his life. But he held the baby, rocked the baby, and within a few minutes his kitchen was clean again and the baby was asleep on his shoulder, and his collar was held tight inside one tiny fist.

Dee pressed close again, smoothing the child’s hair, coaxing its fingers open, and finally letting out a breathy laugh that brushed Vesca’s throat and skipped along his collarbone. “It seems he has taken a liking to you, Mr FBI.”

“Awful nice of him, when we ain’t even been properly introduced,” Vesca drawled, and quirked an eyebrow at Dee expectantly. The Chinese laughed again, and took his baby back.

“His name is my name,” he said. “We are D. Not Dee, as you so charmingly wrote on your lab reports.” He tucked the younger D’s head under his chin as Vesca snorted.

“If you don’t write it on the board, I’m not gonna go out of my way learning how to spell it,” he said. “You never did explain anything properly.”

Dee – D, but what the hell was that about, and who the hell pronounced a single consonant? Dee – looked at him for a long moment over the baby’s head. “Why don’t you make a little more of that foul tea you have,” he suggested evenly. “I will put D down in your room, and then I will practice giving you explanations.” He paused, raised his eyes to Vesca’s, eyes relatively normal again. “If you are certain that you wish to hear them.”

Vesca stared at him, hard. There was a challenge in that, he knew. This wasn’t going to be anything that made sense, and it was even less likely to be something that he liked. But wasn’t this what he’d wanted ever since he’d walked into that empty lab? Wasn’t this what he’d wanted ever since Alberto had shrugged helplessly, miserably, and told him that he simply had no idea where D had gone, or if he was coming back, only that all of his research had been left in Alberto’s care?

“Like I said, you’re pretty terrible at explaining things,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I stopped listening.”

Dee’s mask slid back into place like a sailboat over water. “Very well, Mr FBI. Think well about your questions, then.” He turned toward the hall, still smiling that faint, bland smile. “I will answer them, after all.”

Vesca let him go, and wondered, as he heated water and tried to think of a way to make his tea taste a little less foul, whether he really wanted any of those questions answered after all.


	4. Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Vesca asked for the truth, this was not what he had in mind.

In the end, Vesca settled for ice cream to go alongside the tea, and Dee appeared mollified by his selection. Some ridiculously sweet thing with butterscotch and chocolate sauce or something through it; Vesca hadn’t quite grown out of the habit of checking the ingredients panel for grams of sugar per serve rather than checking what was in the treat itself. He set Dee’s dessert and his tea down on the coffee table, returning to the kitchen to make a mug of coffee for himself. He didn’t like the stuff much, but it was more sobering than tea was by a long shot.

He could feel Dee’s eyes on him the entire time, and by the time he made it back to the couch he was more than a little wary about not even having an armchair or something to retreat to, which was a pretty decent indicator of how sharply his social life had declined since he’d joined the Bureau. Not that he’d had much of one to start with. If worst came to worst, he supposed, he could always sit on the table. It wasn’t as though either of them was going to watch the television.

When he had no more excuses to clatter around the kitchen, he picked up his mug and moved toward the couch. He wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that Dee had made no song and dance of the ice cream, as he had always done when it came to sugar, and that he had moved silently from the dessert to Vesca’s reportedly foul tea. Anyone else, and Vesca would have assumed Dee was just as uneasy as he was, but... Dee didn’t experience discomfort. He caused it. If Dee really was uneasy, then there was something subtly wrong with Vesca’s universe.

He sat down heavily at the end nearest the kitchen, turned subtly so he could watch Dee over the rim of his mug. Dee stared back. Silent. Emotionless. Or at least, the Dee version of emotionless, which always came with its own little enigmatic smile. The smile that meant you had no chance in hell of ever guessing what he was thinking, so after a while Vesca had stopped trying to guess, just accepted that what went on in Dee’s head stayed in Dee’s head right up until he said something that made no sense and messed your whole world up if you listened to it.

And he did listen. There was something fucking wrong with him.

“You had questions, Mr Agent.” If he hadn’t been watching, Vesca would have missed the bastard’s mouth moving for all the change that didn’t happen in his face. He shifted, leaned back, felt the arm of the couch digging into his left side and felt oddly comforted by the sensation. His apartment. Nothing weird was lurking here.

“I did.” He watched Dee steadily, eyes slightly narrowed, brow slightly creased. He still hadn’t quite decided which question to ask first, but starting at the beginning seemed as good as anything, so he went with that: “Were you serious, about the killing people thing?”

Dee’s face didn’t change. “Yes.”

Silence.

Ignoring the swooping sensation in his stomach, Vesca said, “You want me to rephrase that as an open-ended question, or are you going to stop being a total fucking prick?” Who the hell did Dee think he was, anyway, showing up and sweet-talking, well, panic-talking his way into Vesca’s apartment and then answering loaded questions like that one had been in one fucking syllable? What the fuck. Obviously five years hadn’t changed a goddamn thing.

Dee’s eyes drifted to the side. Toward the television, oddly enough. Vesca never thought he’d see the day Dee wished for the presence of television, but decided not to comment in favour of receiving a more detailed answer to his initial question.

“My father took my son from me.”

It wasn’t a tone he was accustomed to hearing from Dee. Instead of a smooth, almost musical lilt, this was lower. Darker. Grinding. Something twisted under Vesca’s ribs. “But you have your son.” He didn’t want to hear this. Jesus, God, he did not want to hear this, but he did, and he’d asked, and fuck if anything he said was going to stop it now.

Dee’s smile widened a fraction. His eyes did not change. “Yes. I killed my father, Vesca, and I took my son back.”

Vesca leaned forward very carefully and put his coffee on the table. Leaned back just as carefully, and looked Dee very carefully in the face. His eyes were still that horrible blank, brows and lips quirked to indicate mild amusement, but his eyes... there was nothing there.

“I guess the next question is ‘why’,” Vesca said, much more calmly than he thought his voice had any right to be. Dee didn’t sound as though his father’s death had been any kind of accident. He sounded as though it had taken everything he had. So you’re sitting in your apartment with a murderer, he thought, also in a voice that he distantly recognised was too calm. He would panic about this later, maybe. Right now it seemed a little more important not to make any sudden movements.

Dee’s hands were still cupped around his mug, though he didn’t appear to be drinking it. Vesca could see reddened flesh, and wondered why he didn’t put it down. But the careful refolding of Dee’s long fingers around the mug as he began to speak made it clear that Dee, too, seemed to need an anchor for this, and the chipped yellow horror and Vesca’s face were all the anchor he had.

“Do you remember, Vesca,” he said, “what I told you... that time in Greece? The reason that I chose genetic engineering as my field of study.” Vesca nodded uneasily. He remembered. Hell, he was pretty sure he would never forget that trip as long as he damn well lived. There was something about crazy eyeless bird women that did that to the human mind, he guessed. “I told you... that I had done it for the sake of another. That other was my son.”

Vesca let that slide for all of two seconds. “But that was—he wasn’t even born then, Dee. Couldn’t have been.” He leaned forward, elbow digging into his thigh, hand out flat before him as he attempted to demonstrate the impossibility inherent in Dee’s claim. “That kid, he can’t be more than a few months old at most. You’re telling me your family has some kind of, of genetic predisposition to something? That’s why you took it up?”

Dee laughed, low and cold, and something in the gesture was familiar. “Oh, Vesca,” he mocked. “Always so certain. He cannot be more than a few months old, you say, and yet in your years, my son was born more than a decade ago. He simply was not born here.”

Vesca was abruptly very glad that he was not holding his coffee. He was pretty sure he would have broken the mug.

“I don’t know if you noticed, Dee,” he said, slowly and carefully and clearly not ready to slam Dee’s head into his coffee table at all, “but there’s not a time zone on the fucking planet that makes that possible.” Dee had always been a little cracked, he thought, mind racing for an explanation for the apparent paradox. Maybe he’d had another son? A son who had died? That’d make sense—

“No,” Dee agreed. There was a moment of silence, and then he sighed softly, and set his tea aside as well. “There is no way to make this easy for you, Vesca. We are not of the same kind. We are hardly of the same world. And my son, though born twelve years ago in your world, was indeed born only months ago in mine.”

“...if you are trying to tell me that you are an alien, Dee, I am going to punch you. I really am.”

“Not an alien, Mr Agent.” Dee dismissed the idea with a wave of one hand. “A... spirit, I suppose. An immortal.” His lips quirked mischievously. “A god, perhaps.”

“A god of fucking stupid,” Vesca snarled, perhaps insensibly, but sense had gone right out the window from the second he’d sat down. “What the hell are you fucking talking about, you crazy son of a bitch? Immortal? You fucking—you—” But against his will, the idea was making sense, and there was something very wrong with him and god fucking dammit he needed something to drink. Something else. Something not caffeinated.

No fucking wonder Dee had given him such a long goddamn time to think about this.

“You aren’t lying, are you,” he muttered, staring distractedly, hands pressing into his scalp as though they could help to pin down his thoughts. “That is. That is fucking crazy, Dee. Do you know how fucking crazy you sound?”

“I am aware,” Dee said, perfectly composed, “that this is quite out of the realms of your expectation, Vesca, but you did ask for a more detailed answer, and I am attempting to give you one. I can only urge you to be more cautious about what you demand.”

Vesca felt that urge to smack Dee upside the head. Resisted, because good agents don’t get arrested for assault. “Well, I’m demanding right now that you explain properly. In a way that makes sense,” he clarified, eyeing the Chinese man narrowly. Dee’s head tilted ever so slightly to one side, and something of... pity? Came into his eyes.

“I can only give you the truth, Vesca. I cannot equip you to deal with it.”


	5. Part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vesca gets the closest thing to an explanation he thinks he's going to get.

“I can only give you the truth, Vesca. I cannot equip you to deal with it.”

The truth. And the truth made no sense. Vesca braced himself a little more firmly against the arm of the couch, crossed his arms, tried to look like he didn’t have a headache. If Dee was telling the truth according to Dee, then he had two options, and the first was that Dee was completely crazy.

But he had always thought Dee was slightly crazy. He didn’t think the same way as normal people. And his priorities were certainly very different, that he knew from countless lab sessions with the guy. So if Dee had always been slightly crazy, chances were that he wasn’t actually crazy. Chances were, he was just different. So chances were... the alien god theory was more or less the truth.

Vesca wanted a cigarette.

There were none in his pockets. He stood, walked to the kitchen, grabbed his spare pack from the top drawer. More information. He needed more information. For any assessment to be accurate, he needed to be in possession of all the facts. So, what were the facts?

Dee’s blood turns into flowers. I have seen women where there were apparently only birds, and I was not drunk or hallucinating, probably, because there was air in that cavern, or Dee would have been suffocating too.

Unless he really wasn’t human. But that argument spiralled away into his head, and he made a sound of disgust around the filter as he lit the cigarette. Too circular. Abandon unless further information presented.

Which left him with a long, difficult discussion ahead of him, he was sure.

Inhale. Slight burn. Exhale. Calm.

“All right.” The knot of not-knowing, not-understanding was loosening in his chest. He’d always hated being unable to comprehend, but the nicotine would deal with that, and he’d be great. He’d be fine. He wasn’t exactly dependant on this, but addiction was a useful thing to have on your side when you needed to think straight about things. “You don’t make sense. You don’t make my kind of sense,” he clarified, when Dee’s brow furrowed and he opened his mouth to make reply. “So why don’t you just explain, and I’ll sit on my questions.”

Dee’s expression changed, just for a second. Enough for Vesca to catch a glimmer of surprise, the suggestion of a measuring look, before the mask returned. “Very well. I will not attempt to spare you, Vesca. You may trust in what I tell you, or not. It makes no difference to me.”

Vesca took another drag on his cigarette instead of going with his initial reaction – to tell Dee he didn’t trust him as far as he could throw him. “Go ahead.”

“My son’s birth was... incomplete.” For the first time in his explanation, Dee’s eyes flitted away from Vesca’s. “Because of our history, the nature of our birth, I... I am uncertain of the cause. But he is not well, Vesca. You saw his eyes, correct?” Without waiting for Vesca’s nod, he plowed ahead. “It is... unheard of. Neither my father, nor myself... genetically, it is impossible that he should have eyes of different colours. And yet...” One hand pulled away from his mug, hovered for a moment in front of him in a gesture that would typically have accompanied some long and complex explanation, and then dropped to Dee’s lap, curling into a loose fist. “It is not important, I suppose, that you understand the circumstances of our birth. Only believe me when I tell you that his eyes are... quite low on my list of concerns.

“When I realised that something was amiss, I returned to my father, in the hope that, perhaps, he would know something I did not. Some way to help him mend. But my father has never been the type to mend what is broken.” Dee’s fist clenched a little tighter, and for the first time something of true agitation flickered about his eyes, set his delicate jaw more firmly. “He knew no more of the cause of my son’s illness than I did. But humans are finding more and more about their blood, their origins, with science, and when I suggested...” He broke off for a moment. Vesca watched his clenched fist warily for traces of blood – Dee’s nails were way too long – and frowned when he noticed that the hand was trembling.

Something like guilt twined through his guts, and he grimaced. He’d done that, by insisting on this. Even if Dee had killed someone, seeing him so discomposed, even if it was nothing on the sort of discomposure you’d see from a regular human being, this was... definitely different. And not in any kind of good way.

“He took your kid,” Vesca said, trying to make it easier, and Dee’s eyes closed, brow furrowing, as he struggled to return to the calm, unruffled exterior that he normally projected.

“I should have known,” he whispered in return. “I could not fight his decision at the time. He was my father, Vesca. That does not mean to you what it means to me. And so I...” A harsh swallow. A deep breath. “I left my son with my father, in a place where time’s flow is... different. And I studied human science. I studied everything I could think of, and by the time I came to be your tutor, I... I thought I had found something, Vesca. A way to save my son. And more than that, a way to convince my father that human science would not be... unforgivable. A way to convince him that I had not abandoned my duties, to him or to my people.”

“So you left,” Vesca was unable to resist pointing out. “You got what you wanted, and you went back for him. Right?”

Dee tried for a smirk. Didn’t quite make it. Wound up looking more like a grimace, if any expression on Dee’s face could ever have such an ugly-sounding word applied to it. “You are correct, Mr Agent. That is why I left so suddenly. I did not need the research that I left with dear Alberto, and the information I took with me was information that no human had seen. I took that information to my father and tried to explain my intentions, but after all my work, my father still would not...”

“Wouldn’t listen.” Vesca finished the sentence flatly. “So you killed him.”

“He would not allow my son the chance for survival.” Dee’s mask was back in place now, cold and imperious, even as the hand in his lap continued to shake. “Survival of the fittest has always been his creed, and my son is hardly fit. Perhaps siblings are not quite the same, Vesca, but if your brother... if Paul were to be sentenced to death, and you had a way to save him but were forbidden from its use...?”

Vesca scowled. “Don’t bring me into this. We have laws about human lives, Dee, and if you could prove that you could save the kid’s life, you would’ve had people on your side, and there’d be nothing your father could do about it.” He glared at the coffee table. “Even if you do have a goddamn criminal record the size of Texas.”

Silence stretched in the apartment. Dee’s face was very still while he watched Vesca’s face. “Ah,” he said vaguely. “You have discovered our family history after all. You might have mentioned, Mr Agent.” The vague disapproval in his tone was the last straw. Vesca’s mouth dropped open incredulously for a few seconds, and then without really even meaning to say anything, his voice sputtered into life.

“What might I have mentioned?” he demanded, distantly aware that his voice had risen about an octave out of sheer frustrated fury. “Oh, hi Dee, welcome back, how’s the murdering going? Jesus fucking Christ! How the hell am I supposed to, I mean, there are years of those things, and then you come in here outright telling me you’ve killed someone lately, and—” He made an expansive, helpless sort of gesture with his hands. “I thought one fucking death was enough to be getting on with, all right? I didn’t even mean to bring it up. I mean, it doesn’t exactly have a lot to do with your father, Dee.”

To his total frustration, Dee started laughing. Not the polite little titters he usually did, either – deeper, harsher, and entirely more frightening. Vesca's hands clenched on his knees. "What the hell are you laughing at?"

Dee's grin actually showed teeth this time, a sick little sliver of white between lips too dark not to be made up, too natural-looking not to be perfectly real. "Nothing to do with my father, Vesca? What an interesting assessment. You have not even met my father, Vesca, and yet automatically you assume that he--"

"Well, I'm not likely to ever meet him, now, am I?" Vesca shot back. "So why don't you tell me what the fuck is going on? Stop laughing!" Before he could help it, he'd reached for the front of Dee's shirt and hauled him halfway across the couch. Dee's eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, his grin became a sneer almost instantly.

"You may count yourself fortunate, Vesca, that you never will meet him." His breath was sweeter than it had any right to be, given that he'd recently inhaled a pound of raw meat. "Do you think he would approve, that my first bid for assistance was to turn to you? He is more than related to those murders, Vesca, he is the one who taught me, the one who would have taught my son, that passing judgement on your kind was only right." Dee's perfect hands came up to shove furiously at Vesca's shoulders, and his palm was bleeding, Vesca noticed, and his breathing was deep and fast as he continued to rant, not realising that Vesca had basically stopped listening, not realising that Vesca had been distracted, as he usually was at this distance, by the way Dee's fury gave his eyes a sort of glow, how it lent his face a flush that did strange and wonderful things to Vesca's insides.

All movement and thought stilled when a thin, infant wail sliced through the air, and Dee looked abruptly contrite. "D..." he murmured, and made to stand, but Vesca beat him to it.

"Stay here," he said. "Help yourself to more tea, or whatever. If you're going to live here, then he'd better get used to me pretty quick."

"Live here." Dee echoed the words as though he could not quite believe that Vesca had said them first. He opened his mouth, still flushed from his previous rage, though paling swiftly, and Vesca waved him off decisively.

"No, look, kid's crying." He glared out at the darkening horizon as he walked toward his bedroom. "Tell me when I get back."

D was red-faced and piteous in his wailing, small arms thrashing against the blankets of his confines. They must have scared the kid, yelling like that. There was no way he wouldn't recognise his own father's voice raised in anger. Vesca sat down on the edge of the bed as gently as he could and lifted the squirming child cautiously into his arms.

D did not seem immediately reassured by this. Vesca grimaced. All of his siblings had been pretty touchy-feely babies who quieted down pretty much the minute they were hugged or picked up. Didn't look like this kid was going to be the same ball game.

"Hey, now," he muttered gruffly, bouncing lightly on the mattress, patting the kid's back in time with the movements. "'s okay, kid. Probably you oughta get used to it, because your dad and me, we fight like that all the time. Usually with longer words," he added, recalling some of their spats over cultures in petri dishes that had been meddled with, or just gone wrong of their own accord. "At least you're gonna be well-educated."

Again, the sound of his voice seemed to have a postitive effect on the baby. It figured. Dee was talkative enough when left to his own devices, and presumably he sung to the kid at least as much as he'd sung to his herb garden. He snorted, unable to help himself, and muttered again, "You are going to grow up so confused."

"Not nearly as confused as his father."

Dee's voice from behind him made him jump, and when he turned, Dee was leaning against the doorframe, his face not-quite visible, since the light in the hallway was on, but the light in the bedroom was not. Vesca cocked his head, continuing to thump the baby's back rhytmically, and raised an eyebrow at Dee. "Why's that?"

Dee tucked his hair behind one ear, then crossed his arms as though he was not entirely certain, himself. Then, so softly that Vesca was at first uncertain he had even heard it, he said, "Are my crimes so easy to forgive?" He didn't sound guilty, or even very penitent. He just sounded like he was having trouble understanding Vesca's reaction. And that was enough to make Vesca smile at him again. Or smirk a little, at least.

"We're a selfish species, right?" Vesca shifted so he could see Dee a little better, even though he probably only succeeded in making sure that Dee could see his face. "Only thing you did to me, personally, is piss me off. That and put my job in jeopardy." He couldn't see Dee's face, but he saw his shoulders tighten. Vesca shook his head. "Not what I meant. Fact is... I've seen shit. Things," he corrected, belatedly remembering that, yeah, this was a baby, and if it had anything like Dee's inellect, it was probably already capable of understanding everything Vesca said. "Around you. Even if it made no sense, I'm pretty sure I wasn't seeing things."

He frowned slightly, glanced down and away to the right, trying to work out what, exactly, he was trying to say, here. "I guess..." ...I guess it means more to me that you came to me for help, than that you've potentially fucked up my whole life, again, he thought, and realised that he couldn't possibly say that with a straight face, not now, not to Dee. "...I'm not sure," he finished gruffly, bowing his head so that his nose was resting against the baby's warm, sweet-smelling scalp.

Dee's silhouette bent its head, as though he was looking at the floor, and his shoulders lost their stiffness. Vesca glared at him sharply. If that was a bow, he wanted none of it.

"Don't mean you're not gonna keep explaining," he added, and was rewarded with Dee straightening, and a soft chuckle. The baby fussed at the removal of his face against its head, and he shifted so that D was half against his neck. "I mean it, Dee. Soon as this little guy goes back down..."

"Then I will wait in the living room." Dee capitulated as gracefully as he did everything else. "It seems he is quite fond of you, Vesca."

Vesca chuckled, and moved from patting D's back to rubbing it gently. "Well, least I know your name, now," he murmured to the child. "Mine's Vesca, by the way. For future reference."

He tried not to feel warm and fuzzy when the baby's tiny hand came to rest on his collar bone, and failed dismally. No wonder he hadn't killed Paul when his car had been crashed. Sibling complex, he was pretty sure they called it. Only for this kid, that didn't quite make sense. Hell, maybe he just liked kids a lot more than he thought he had. There was something supremely relaxing about sitting here in the dark, something warm and entirely dependent nestled against his shoulder. Almost made him want to kick off his shoes and lie down.

But Dee's explanation was likely to get even more complicated from here on out. Ah well. At least tomorrow was Sunday. He could sleep in.

He maintained that level of optimism for about thirty seconds before he remembered that he was holding an infant, and so uninterrupted sleep was right out of the equation. Hell. Why didn't he think of these things before he agreed on them?

Despite the realisation, the contentment lasted him all the way back out into the living room, where Dee had opened up his glass doors and let himself out onto the balcony, where Vesca kept a clothes horse and a small collection of potted plants whose health varied according to the hours he kept. Currently, they weren't looking too great, but Dee had taken a glass of water out with him, and was currently applying it to each of them in turn.

"You gonna sing to them, too?" he asked, and Dee turned and raised an eyebrow at him.

"Why would I?" he asked sweetly. "You do an admirable job of that already, Mr Agent." And he brushed by Vesca on the way to the dishwasher as though he'd lived here all his life, as though this was perfectly normal. Vesca glared at his plants for a few seconds before he realised what he was doing and turned abruptly to walk back inside.

"So your blood turns into flowers," he said, as a conversation starter. "Is that what's happening there, too?"

"Oh, no," Dee demurred, retrieving their mugs from the kitchen bench and gliding back towards the couch, apparently completely recovered. "My kind has long been allied with the creatures of this world. Our blood is a trade for their presence, a summoning more than a transmutation." Vesca shook his head and winced visibly as Dee gave him an amused smirk. “Something wrong?” he inquired innocently, as though he had no idea, and Vesca shook his head.

“Not a thing,” he ground out, and sat down again, not sure whether to be pleased or pissed off when he discovered that Dee remembered exactly how he liked his tea.

"Who's his mother, anyway?" It had been sitting in the back of his mind since Dee had walked through the door, but there had never seemed to be an appropriate interval, and now was as good a time as any. Besides, he really kind of wanted to know. Dee had never really struck him as the marrying type. Or the knocking-people-up type either, to tell the truth, though he was certainly flirtatious enough to be the latter.

Dee raised both of his eyebrows, opened his mouth, and then huffed out his breath with a wry smile, shaking his head. "Of all things not to mention," he murmured, apparently to himself. Then, "Actually, Mr Agent, he does not have a mother. That is why his illness is so strange, and of such concern. My kind is capable of reproducing via parthenogenesis."

It was maybe the first time in life that Vesca had wished he did not know what a word meant. "Oh," he managed. Sat down a little harder than he'd intended to. "Oh."

Dee looked as though he was amused by Vesca's reaction, and trying not to be, which didn't help at all. "Okay," said Vesca inanely. "Anything else you want to get off your chest, get all my heart attacks over with at the same time?"

Dee looked or a moment as though he were considering. Then, to Vesca's relief, he shrugged, and shook his head, eyes bright with amusement. "Nothing comes to mind."

"Okay then," Vesca leaned back into his couch, glad for the moment to be close to the cool air drifting in through the open door. "So, I have to ask... why me? I mean, you seemed like you liked Alberto pretty well, and at least he owed you a lot already, since he ended up with half your research. What made you think I'd even let you in?"

For a moment, the expression on Dee's face was vulnerable. Then, pitying. And then he smiled into his mug, said, "Ah," vaguely, and sipped as though he needed the reprieve. "An interesting question. I suppose I can only tell you that I came to you because I could find you." He looked up, eyes thinning in a tiny, genuine smile. "And I came to you because where the professor saw and heard only dumb creatures, sometimes I know that you saw people."

Vesca felt his throat constrict. "The birds, under that island," he said tightly. "You mean them?"

"Those ladies," Dee agreed. "And at other times, also. I suppose you do not recall speaking to my spinifex when you first visited my unattended office, but he remembered how polite you were."

“Spinifex.” Vesca stared. If he thought about it, he had vague memories of a... pale, weedy sort of guy, tall, with... stringy hair... camouflage gear and combat boots that made his tiny frame look even more ridiculous. He’d wanted an extension, because his room mate at the time had managed to kill the assignment that was due in a few days. He did remember being carefully polite, but that had been mostly because the guy had been pale and kind of unhinged-looking. “So I was your best bet because I hallucinate? What the hell, Dee?”

Dee laughed. Properly this time. "I cannot say that was precisely my thought process, but in a matter of speaking, I suppose you are correct."

Vesca waited with raised eyebrows, and Dee tucked a stray strand of hair behind one ear, eyes losing focus as he stared at nothing in particular, clearly deep in thought. At last, he began again. "In fact, Mr Agent, I came to you because there is no longer anywhere else for me to go."

Vesca had to scoff at that. "What, you couldn't just take over your old man's pet shop? Could've fed the habit, if you had." He would have said more, perhaps, if Dee's face had not taken on that eerie smile again, the smile that matched the hysterical laughter of a few hours before.

"The pet shop is no more," he said. "I... broke it. When my father died, the pet shop died with him. At least until such a time as my power may sustain it, but that may be never. I was raised there, but... the pet shop was my father's business. I know what he did. I have no knowledge of the way it worked." He shook his head, lip curling with a scorn that Vesca had not seen on his face in a long time. "I suspect that my son is not the only one to be born incomplete."

Vesca tried to think of something to say. He squirmed for a few seconds, then muttered something under his breath, glaring at the table. Dee raised both brows encouragingly, plainly not having heard a single word, and Vesca cleared his throat.

"Look pretty healthy to me," he repeated, steadfastly not looking in Dee's direction. "And besides, if you're not, then that means your son has a pretty good chance of growing up, right? Even without your help."

He could feel Dee watching him, so he kept his gaze averted. "Anyway. It's getting late. I don't have work tomorrow, either, so. Uh. Didn’t look like you were carrying much, when you came in, so maybe it’s a good idea to pick up some, uh, essentials.”

“How unlike you to submit so willingly to the necessity of a shopping trip,” Dee commented lightly, and smiled disarmingly when Vesca’s head snapped up to glare at him. “I confess, I am ill-prepared and unfortunately without means to support myself. But I will change that as soon as I am able. Until then. I can only thank you for your assistance, Vesca.” Violet eyes settled on his face, and he felt himself reddening, because for once, Dee seemed completely sincere.

“Yeah, well, don’t go thanking me yet,” he grumbled. “I may yet decide I can’t take the chance you’ll kill me in my sleep.” Speaking of which, he supposed he had better locate a blanket or something, since he’d bet money that Dee wouldn’t take kindly to sleeping on the couch. (That was assuming Vesca made him sleep on it, anyway, which he wouldn’t. D was in the other room. Dee’d want to be close to him, and there was no place for a baby out here. Not yet, anyway.) He rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his left hand. “And I think it’s about time for that. This has been one hell of a day.”

He pushed up off the couch and wandered to what passed for his linen closet, and was also his general storage space for tapes, books, and miscellaneous bullshit his mother had thought might make his apartment look more homely. No matter how many times he oiled the thing, it still squeaked like a mouse being trodden on, but this was the first time he’d paused after the sound and winced, preparing to be blasted with another infant wail. Surprisingly, though, D slept on, and Vesca retrieved a sheet and, on further consideration, a quilt, without further ado.

He returned to the couch with them, expecting Dee to have vacated it by now, but instead Dee raised his hands expectantly for the blankets. Vesca stared open-mouthed for a few seconds, and then sputtered, “Don’t be a moron. Get the hell off my couch.” Dee returned his stare for a few moments, and then stood in a single fluid movement.

“Such a gentleman,” he teased as he passed. “I always knew you were a lovely boy, Mr University Student.”

“You know my name, so use it,” Vesca grumbled, spreading the quilt with a firm flick of his wrists. He grabbed the back of the couch for balance while he struggled with his shoes, lined them up neatly underneath the coffee table, and shucked the cushions and blankets into a slightly more plausible resting place. Damn couch was way too short for the both of them, but at least it was wide enough to make a decent bed. He turned around to eye Dee expectantly. “Bathroom’s an ensuite. Wake me up if you need anything.”

*

He woke three times in the night. Once because of the baby, once when Dee came out in the middle of the night for more steak (presumably for the baby, again, because he didn’t cook it, and he apologised weakly as he passed, though Vesca was pretty sure he hadn’t moved or made any noise), and once just because it started to rain and the sound permeated his sleep and made him dream of clutching clawed hands, darkness and drowning.

He stayed awake for a long time after that, long enough that he noticed the crick in his neck and realised there was no way he’d be getting back to sleep, especially when the sun began to rise. He lay there a while longer, though, gritting his teeth as the rain got heavier and his mind started doing what it usually did when he could hear large amounts of moving water, which was be stupid and assail him with bits of information he’d stored from years ago, like the sound of a thousand wings in the dark, and how hard it was to run in flippers and not plant his face into rock walls—

Growling, he got up to make coffee.


	6. Part 5

Dee emerged not long after Vesca had microwaved water, looking entirely too refreshed, given that the sun had barely struggled over the horizon. Vesca stared at him over the top of his coffee mug, and Dee smiled, and glided straight past him to the sliding glass door and the balcony. For a second, he ducked to stroke his fingertips along the stems of Vesca’s herbs, and the next minute a pair of crows had landed on the railing of Vesca’s balcony, voices loud and raucous and probably disturbing half the complex. Within seconds there were seven of them, and Dee was smiling and urging them to silence with a finger against his lips, ruffling the feathers along their breasts, smoothing those draggled by wind and rain along the tops of their heads.

Vesca watched for a few minutes, sighed, and stared glumly into his coffee cup. Definitely not a long, strange dream, then.

Dee saw the birds off with the gentle expression most people reserved for their lovers and young children, then turned and stepped back into the apartment. He caught Vesca's eyes and his expression cooled somewhat, but only to his usual display of general civility.

"Good morning, Mr Agent," he said, and headed straight for Vesca's cupboard. He filled a mug with water, then grabbed the package of steak from the fridge and ripped the final steak in half with his fingers. He ate it over the sink while Vesca watched with an expression that tried not to be horror, and washed his fingers fastidiously - all before the microwave beeped. This done, he made himself tea, half-draining Vesca's honey jar in the process, and leaned on the bench opposite Vesca to drink it, violet eyes calm and watchful over its brim.

"You do not seem well-rested," he said. "I apologise for waking you."

Vesca shrugged, uncomfortable with the topic. "Not like I sleep well, anyway," he muttered, gulping down another mouthful of hot, bitter caffeine. "Think I only woke up because of you once."

Dee made a thoughtful sound in the back of his throat. "I cannot imagine why that would be," he said, though Vesca was pretty sure he could imagine, and did. "You do not look as though you require more physical activity."

Vesca opened his mouth to reply, then just settled for giving Dee a weird look. What was that supposed to mean? It sounded almost like... but that was a hell of a way to give a compliment. "How'd you sleep?" he asked instead, and Dee smirked.

"Very well, considering," he said, and left Vesca hanging until the blond man growled out, considering what? "Nothing, dear agent, nothing at all." Twitch of lips. Quirk of brow. "Although you must have been working very hard of late, to go so long without washing your sheets."

Vesca blinked, scowled when he realised that, hell, it had been a while. He was on the verge of apologising when he remembered that Dee hadn't exactly given him advance warning, and murder was a little higher on Vesca's list of priorities than clean sheets when you got right down to it. "We just wrapped a case up on Friday morning, actually," he said. "I was out of the house for nearly a week before that, so like I said - you're lucky I was here at all. I haven't slept in there for a while, so it's not like they're filthy. Just, uh," he faltered at the expression on Dee's face, the smirk that remained there. "Could do with some airing, maybe."

And a wash, he added, to himself. But hell if he was going to let Dee hear him say that.

"I could probably use some new ones anyway," he said after a moment. "We can pick some up today."

Dee sipped his tea meditatively. Dark hair spilled forward over his shoulders with the movement. Vesca wondered absently if he'd been in the shower already and Vesca just hadn't heard, but quickly decided that was impossible. "There is no need to go to such expense, Mr Agent," he said. "I dare say I will raise your budget quite enough, simply by being here."

Vesca opened his mouth to tell Dee that he lived in a small apartment because having a bigger one was pretty much a waste of time when he spent so little time here, so he could shove his budget talk, thanks all the same, but before he could speak, Dee continued.

"If you will purchase me some seeds, and some larger pots, I believe I can cut down on your grocery bill, however." A thin smile over the lip of the mug. "And improve your nutrition. Fast food only speeds you toward your grave."

Vesca couldn't resist the urge to roll his eyes. "Whatever, Dee. I don't eat it all the time. Like I told you, I've just wrapped up a case. I spent the whole week comparing blood and cell samples, and before that we were trying to work out exactly what the bastard was even using." He scowled into his cup. "I've just... been busy, that's all."

Some small, sarcastic part of him asked what exactly he was doing explaining himself to a house guest, anyway. It was a voice he hadn’t heard in a while, and it usually only showed up when he knew he was being an idiot around Dee and couldn’t seem to help himself. He wasn’t sure how to feel about having it back.

“Well, anyway,” he said, disgruntled. “Soon as the kid wakes up, we can take a shower and get going.” Pause at the smirk on Dee’s face. Re-examine what it was he must’ve said. Turn red. “Uh. Showers. Dammit, Dee, you know what I meant.” He scowled into his coffee, and tried to avoid watching Dee touch two fingers to his mouth in some pretty, faux-polite attempt to stifle his laughter.

“You may take one before D wakes,” Dee said at last. “It will not bother him. I’m quite surprised he is sleeping so well, since he is used to more noise than this.”

“More?” Vesca raised both his eyebrows. “What do you... oh. The pets?”

“That’s right.” Dee’s expression had changed back to that all-masking smile, proof to Vesca after all this time that Dee was feeling something and he didn’t want anyone to see. “The pet shop was always quite a noisy place to be, Mr Agent. I will wait until D wakes to bathe, but please don’t feel restrained on our account.”

"Well..." Now that he thought about it, the idea of showering while there was someone else in his apartment was sort of... weird. Especially since the someone else was Dee. If he backed out of it now, though, there was no way that Dee wouldn't know he was uncomfortable with the idea, and Dee had a knack of exploiting things like that. So. "Yeah. Guess I will, then." He drained his mug, the movement a little stiffer than it otherwise would have been, and rinsed it in the sink - he'd wash it properly later.

It felt strange to creep around a sleeping child in his bedroom, but there was no way he could move as he normally did. Whatever Dee said, it was ingrained behaviour to be quiet around kids when they were sleeping, and it'd take a lot more than Dee's cheerful assurance that the baby was used to worse to convince him otherwise.

He opened the closet as quietly as possible, cringing ever so slightly at the squeak of rubber and plastic that heralded the stops on the closet doors. Where the hell were they going today, anyway? He figured he'd stick with jeans, since he hardly got the chance to wear them any more. He was still young enough to get away with it, at least.

He tossed jeans, shirt, underwear onto the bathroom counter, and after a few seconds, he flicked the latch on the door. Then he felt so stupid that he wrenched at the doorknob, unlocking it again, because as though Dee would try to enter the bathroom while he was in it. Jesus. Get a fucking grip, Howell.

He kept telling himself this throughout his entire shower, and he still tweaked the curtain aside suspiciously before he climbed out and started towelling himself dry.

Shaving was not quite its usual soothing, envigorating ritual, because his mind wandered back to Dee while he was scraping dutifully at the clean line of his sideburns. Wondering whether Dee's ... alien-god-whatever-ness meant he didn't need to shave (because Dee sure as hell had not had stubble when he'd walked into Vesca's kitchen that morning) was not exactly high on Vesca's list of relaxing, mundane thoughts to have while standing over his sink. He tugged his shirt over his head, straightened it briefly, wondered if he was getting too old to wear jerseys, and eyed his hair critically.

His hair was short enough these days that he didn't really need to gel it or anything, but he dipped his fingertips and ran them quickly through it anyway, and spent a few self-conscious minutes plucking at the strands that wouldn't sit quite right. Then he just ran his hands straight through it in frustration, and that seemed to make it all turn out all right, so he left it at that.

D was still sleeping when he emerged from the steaming bathroom, but Dee was there, curled on the mattress in his pretty silk robe, which Vesca abruptly realised was not wrinkled in the least. He didn't remember offering Dee the use of a shirt, or pajamas. Something in his mind seemed to switch off, wondering whether Dee had worn his clothing, or just gone to bed naked, so he stood there staring for a few seconds until Dee looked up, and raised an eyebrow.

"Something wrong, Mr Agent?"

"You want to borrow some clothes?" he asked, and grimaced immediately. Stupid. Anything of Vesca's was twice Dee's size. Stupid.

"Have you anything appropriate?" Dee teased, as though he knew Vesca had seen the flaw in his plan as soon as he'd said it. "No, Mr Agent. Unless you have an old girlfriend's clothing somewhere here, then it will be more sensible for me to wear this again."

Vesca opened his mouth to deny it, frowned, and rubbed thoughtfully at his chin. "...actually, I think my sister left a set here when she was helping me move. They might have a few paint spots, but..."

Dee stared at him for a moment, looked down at the sleeve of his robe, and frowned slightly. "...I suppose clean clothing would be best," he admitted.

Given permission, or as close as he was probably going to get, Vesca rummaged in his closet for a few minutes and came up with the jeans in question. Could be worse, he thought. They could be cutoffs. "There's those," he said, tossing them onto the foot of the bed. "And..." For a second he appeared to fight with himself over something, and then he disappeared into the cupboard again, and emerged with a black shirt emblazoned with a logo that Dee did not recognise. It was definitely not in Vesca's size.

"They were sold out of anything that'd fit by the time I got to the head of the line," said Vesca, "but I got one for the hell of it. And if you spill anything on it I will kill you, because even if I wear the crap out of it, it will be worth a million dollars one day."

There was a vague, uncomfortable pause.

"You have, uh," Vesca said, a little helplessly, and after a moment Dee blinked and looked away, not flushing, clearly unnerved.

"Ah, yes," he said. "There will be no need to... mmm. A towel, perhaps?" Dee suggested, and Vesca nodded and jerked a thumb at the bathroom.

"Under the sink." He seemed relieved to be back on safer ground. "Go ahead, anyway, I mean, I can handle the kid if he wakes up while you're in there."

Dee gathered the jeans and the shirt carefully, and slipped off the bed to kneel momentarily by his suitcase. Vesca looked determinedly at the ceiling for a minute, shook his head at himself for being stupid again, and stepped around Dee on his way out into the hall, wondering - not for the first time - exactly what it meant when you couldn't bear to ask a male friend - a male enemy, even - if they needed to borrow any underwear.

*

D hadn’t woken by the time Dee got out of the shower, either, and Vesca was actually glad of this because it gave him yet another reason why he shouldn’t howl with laughter at the sight of Dee in his sister’s jeans and his favourite and shirt. Dee seemed to sense his amusement anyway, even when Vesca had only said, carefully neutral, “That sure makes a difference.” He glared at Vesca, and plucked at the shirt distastefully with his long nails.

“It is all too tight,” he complained. “Clothing is not supposed to... cling like this.”

“Actually,” Vesca began to correct him, not quite gleefully, and stopped when Dee’s mouth twisted downward in a pretty warning grimace. Seeing Dee in normal clothes, normal, reasonably attractive clothes, with his hair wet and not quite perfect but his makeup still pristine reminded Vesca abruptly that Dee was always dangerously beautiful when he was angry, and that making him angry while he was a little closer to Vesca’s usual frame of reference was probably not the best idea Vesca’d ever had.

“Well, that’s why we’re going shopping today, right?” he said instead. “Although unless you want to wear the sort of thing my sister usually wears, I wouldn’t get your hopes up about anything not clinging. Uh. Unless you want to look like you’re wearing a sack.”

“Since I will be looking remarkably unattractive in either case, I would much prefer to be comfortable,” he said, waspishly, and strode across the kitchen to retrieve his mug and fill it with water again. Vesca blinked. Was Dee... actually embarrassed? To be wearing real clothing?

Did he seriously think he looked ‘remarkably unattractive’ in it? Vesca snorted.

“You moron. As if you look bad in anything.” He waited until Dee looked at him, unreadable, before he added, “Although I’m not saying you can get away without brushing your hair.”

Dee didn’t even blink. “I could say the same, Mr Agent,” he retorted. “I would have thought you would outgrow your propensity for the hairstyle of a porcupine.” He set his mug down in the microwave, hit the appropriate buttons, and turned to Vesca with a smirk, one hand on his hip, one coiling a damp strand of hair around itself, playfully. Vesca grinned.

“And here I thought you liked porcupines.”

“Porcupines are naturally porcupines,” Dee said blandly, popping the microwave’s door a split second before it would have emitted its usual piercing beep. “I far prefer people to be naturally people, no matter their flaws.”

“That’s an interesting opinion for you to have,” said Vesca, raising one eyebrow. He did not need to elaborate: in the next moment, Dee’s features had smoothed into his usual mask, and all Vesca needed do was raise his hands pointedly before the expression faltered and Dee was left looking mildly shocked, presumably at the fact that in addition to daring to question him, Vesca had actually proved a point. Well, he hadn’t learned nothing in five years. That was a relief.

Dee stirred sugar into his tea, eschewing milk as he usually did. There was silence in the kitchen for a few minutes. Eventually, Dee broke it.

“You are correct,” he said, oddly stiff in his formality. “It is something I have been raised to. Perhaps it is something better abandoned.” He quirked a smile. “Since I have already abandoned much else, there seems little point clinging to such a small tradition.”

Vesca shifted uncomfortably. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Dee cocked his head at Vesca, several strands of his hair escaping the rest of the dark mass and dangling before his right eye. “You have never in my experience, Mr Agent, said anything that you did not, on some level, mean.” He smiled while Vesca was still busy feeling slightly guilty. “I am certain, however, that you have also never, in my experience, meant it for ill.”

“Aside from all the times I wanted to kill you,” Vesca said, sarcasm overcoming the idea that maybe it was better to let Dee forgive him without opening his mouth. Dee seemed unperturbed.

“Even so,” he said obliquely, and sipped at his mug thoughtfully. “I believe I will go and wake my son, Mr Agent, or we may never go shopping at all.” And with that, he set his mug down next to Vesca on the kitchen bench, and glided calmly past him toward the hallway. Vesca watched him go, and reflected that gliding and jeans were not supposed to work like that, but since when had Dee obeyed natural laws, anyway.

Half an hour later they were in Vesca's car - significantly nicer, and significantly cleaner than the last time he'd given Dee a lift - and Dee was sitting in the back with D in his lap, because Vesca was not the sort of person to have a car seat sitting around in reserve. He'd already decided that was going to change this afternoon, though - the thought of a kid sitting in his car totally unrestrained was unnerving, and he found himself incredibly aware of how fast he was going and how hard he braked on the trip into town.

"I suppose you'll want to go to China Town?" he asked over his shoulder, a little way before the turnoff, and was surprised by how long it took Dee to answer.

"Perhaps later," he suggested. "I can think of nothing we would purchase there that is immediately necessary." Vesca might've swung around and looked at him if he hadn't been focusing so hard on the road. A quick glance in the rearview was about all he could spare, given Washington traffic. The little he saw of Dee's serious expression convinced him not to ask if he was sure.

Parking was, as ever, a complete and total bitch, so by the time they were out of the car again and walking around the local mall, Vesca was bristling. He wasn't too fond of people as a general rule, and when they were trying to run him into trolley bays, his opinion on them dropped to Dee-like levels. Wouldn't do to start out the trip furious, though, because that would make it all but impossible to endure.

"You want me to hang onto D while you look?" he asked. "What do you need?"

Dee was frowning, staring about them both with narrowed eyes. "Well," he began uncertainly, and shook his head. "No, not at present, Mr Agent. Perhaps when I find clothing. Ah..." He glanced in Vesca's direction, and Vesca realised just how out of his depth Dee really was. Clearly he'd never been in a mall in his life - not for clothing, not for real clothing.

Vesca huffed a sigh. "Stick with me," he said, and set a hand on Dee's upper arm to steer him through the crowds. "It's getting close to lunch time, so we should check out clothes while it's not so busy." By the red and white banners everywhere, it looked as though a sale was on. Which would be great, ordinarily, except that it was also a weekend, and the place was packed from wall to wall, teeming with people, not all of them savoury-looking.

Resigned to looking just a little bit weird, and hoping to hell the general populace took Dee to be female (with the hair and the baby, it wouldn't be a hard thing to do), he moved his hand across Dee's shoulderblades to rest on his other shoulder, and started manoeuvring them through the throng. Dee moved with him gamely enough, occasionally raising his hand to rest on D's head, as though worried someone, moving too fast, would catch him with something.

D was quiet, staring around them with huge bicoloured eyes. As though Dee didn't attract enough attention as it was, Vesca sighed, quietly relieved that at least the kid was mostly blocked off from the world thanks to being faced backward and being hemmed in by Dee and Vesca's shoulders. Still, "He's dealing pretty well with all the noise," he muttered to the top of Dee's head. Dee gave him a quick smile over the top of the baby's head.

"He is quite able to cope with noise, Mr Agent," he said. "I did mention."

Vesca frowned. "Call me by name here, would you? Whole world doesn't need to know where I work." He felt rather than heard Dee's chuckle.

First stop was the generic department store, crammed with a thousand mothers trying to pick up cheap clothing, all of whom they would probably have to battle just to get enough clothes to see the kid through the winter. "Let's hit the men's department first," he said, again to the top of Dee's head. "In an hour, they'll all be getting their brats lunch."

Dee looked up at him skeptically. "As should I be, Mr... Vesca," he pointed out, and Vesca grimaced. He hadn't exactly thought about that possibility.

"Well, we'll get this over with quick, then," he amended. "Are clothes all you need?"

Dee made a soft considering noise, barely audible over the rabble. "Shoes," he said at last. "Toiletries. Other things can wait until another time."

"Car seat," Vesca added, decisively, and when Dee blinked, he scowled. "We can fit it before we go home. I just don't feel comfortable with you holding onto him, all right?" he added, maybe a little snappishly, when Dee's expression softened a little too much.

"Of course, Vesca." And, surprisingly without any hesitation, or any decrease in warmth, "Thankyou."

Before he could stop himself, he squeezed Dee’s shoulder briefly. And then felt incredibly stupid about doing it, so squeezed again, and made it seem like he’d only done it in order to guide Dee closer to the menswear section through the crowd.

He was pretty sure Dee wasn’t fooled.


	7. Part 6

Standing outside the women's change rooms with a baby might have been a normal enough thing for a man his age to do. Standing outside the men's change rooms with a baby was something that got him stared at. A lot. At first he ignored the sneers on the rest of the store's patron's faces. Then they really started to piss him off.

It didn't help when Dee emerged in pants rolled up at the cuff, gave the baby a glide-by kiss on the forehead, and went in search of something slightly smaller, although for a moment the glares directed at Vesca did turn into disbelieving stares after the Chinese man. The line looked innocent rather hurriedly as Dee returned, smiling briefly and assuring the entire line that he would only be a moment, and then returning to his own change room.

The stares remained disbelieving for all of ten seconds, and then eyes narrowed at Vesca and the baby again. Vesca rolled his eyes, stood, and went to browse through the ties, careful to keep an eye out for Dee over the clothes horses, since he was short enough to disappear in the crowd.

Dee emerged, not quite flushed with satisfaction, but at least in possession of several pairs of pants and what were probably the smallest shirts the store offered, and beamed at Vesca. "Such patient gentlemen," he cooed, and Vesca gave him a disgusted look.

"Yeah, when you were fluttering at them," he said. "The rest of the time they looked like they were going to throw me off the damn building, or stick me with coathangers or something. I was just about ready to pull out my badge."

The look Dee gave him made him pause in his assessment. There was a certain glimmer in his eye as he glanced back toward the line in front of the change rooms. “Oh?” he inquired, ominously thoughtful. Vesca grabbed his wrist.

“Yeah, but they didn’t do anything and we’re out of there now, so let’s go find you some shoes,” he said, all in one breath, and all but dragged Dee to the appropriate section, still holding the baby.

*

As it turned out, Dee’s feet were too small for any of the men’s shoes, so he wound up with a pair of black slippers, much like the sort of shoes Vesca imagined they’d have picked up in China Town. D started fussing as they were paying for the shoes, so the car seat purchase was maybe a little less well-researched than Vesca would have liked, but he supposed anything was better than nothing for the time being.

The process of installing a car seat was frustrating enough without the persistent mewling of a small child; with it, Vesca was about ready to beat his head into his steering wheel by the time they pulled out of the car park. Dee was hovering over the baby, attempting to distract him from his hunger, but it didn’t seem to be doing much. To make matters worse, traffic seemed to have tripled in the hour or so they’d sent in the department store, so it didn’t look as though they’d be getting home any time soon.

“Any way of getting him to quiet down?” Vesca asked, without much hope, when they had crawled past their third block. Dee gave him a look via the rearview mirror.

“Have you a knife?”

Vesca scowled, hands tightening on the wheel. “Don’t joke about things like that,” he muttered, glancing up again when Dee snorted. “What?”

“You always think the worst of me, Mr Agent,” Dee replied imperiously. “I meant, so that I could feed him.”

Vesca blinked. “Oh. Right. Uh...” He leaned across the car to fumble briefly in the glovebox, and made a sound of frustration. “No. Gave it to Andy at the office party. Damn.”

Dee sighed. “Well, I was hoping to avoid this, but...” He raised his hand to his mouth and, as Vesca watched, wide-eyed, bit down on his finger. His brow furrowed with effort, and he made a soft sound of pain as he bit through flesh. His lips were darker than usual with his own blood as his moved the finger to the baby’s mouth, opposite hand cupped carefully beneath it to catch drips.

Vesca only realised he was still staring as traffic moved on when the guy behind him beeped rather forcefully. He jerked the car into motion, cursing softly, and remained uncomfortably aware of the soft sounds of the baby’s contentment and the slightly strained expression on Dee’s face in the rearview mirror for the rest of the trip.

This sure as hell could not be good for his heart.

*

The kid was full and happy by the time they got home, smiling and burbling softly as Dee danced long, graceful fingers before his eyes and spoke to him in Chinese. Vesca didn't understand a word of it, but the playful tone said enough about the content - baby talk. Dee style. If there was one thing in the world he thought he would never see, he was now pretty certain that this was it.

Vesca dumped Dee's purchases on the couch, intent on coffee and some kind of lunch, wondering if he'd have to go shopping again this afternoon - last night he'd been more focused on Dee's bizarre request for raw meat to think about the rest of the week, and this morning had been trying enough without trying to cram groceries onto their list. He stuck two mugs of water into the microwave without really thinking about it, and started to fill the sink to deal with the few dishes they'd gone through yesterday. At least Dee's new diet would mean he didn't have to spend much time scraping the charred remains of marinades off the bottom of his pan.

By the time he got done with the tea and the dishes, Dee was out on the balcony, apparently introducing the baby to the line of crows, and to Vesca's sad excuse for a herb garden. Belatedly, Vesca remembered Dee's suggestion to purchase vegetable seeds, and wondered if he even knew where a garden place was in this city. It'd have to wait. Maybe he could just salvage them from store-bought vegetables or something, though admittedly Vesca didn't know too much about that.

He moved toward the door, expecting the birds to fly away, and kind of disturbed when they didn't. Dee turned to him with an amused expression. "And this is Mr Agent," he confided to the birds. One of them croaked - Vesca didn't think he was imagining disparagement - and Dee chuckled. "Yes, well," he said in a conciliatory fashion, and Vesca felt just a little more of his sanity slipping away. Crows. Crows were talking about him. This was just great.

"I'm not gonna be able to get you seeds this week," he said without preamble. "I don't even know where to go, this time of day on a Sunday, and I'll be working all week, so there's probably nothing I can do until next Saturday."

Dee's expression became marginally more serious, though one hand still rested companionably on the back of the talkative crow's neck. "Of course, Mr Agent," he said. "It would be very rude to demand that you follow any designs of mine."

Vesca snorted. "That's stopped you before," he muttered half-heartedly, before pressing on. "I'm gonna go pick up some food for the week. Uh, since you'll be the one here most of the time..." And then something occurred to him, and he trailed off, eyes widening slightly.

"Mr Agent?" Dee pressed, not concerned, but certainly curious. Vesca blinked and shook his head.

"Uh, nothing. I just... I guess I ought to get you a key." His voice sounded about as weird as he felt, he figured. He'd sort of only ever thought of keys as a... a people-seeing-people thing. It had always seemed like a pretty big thing in college. It was an admittance of trust, wasn't it? You didn't give your keys to people unless you were pretty damn sure they weren't going to take all of your shit and run with it.

Admittedly, Vesca did not have much, and would be able to replace it all fairly easily even if it was stolen. But it was the principle of the thing, and it felt... weird that he was prepared to just hand over his keys. It felt weird that he didn't feel weird about Dee having his keys. He still wasn't entirely certain about the guy, but if he really thought about it, he couldn't imagine Dee doing anything with Vesca's keys other than... having his keys.

On that level, at least, he trusted Dee implicitly.

Which was a weird thing to realise about a guy you'd known only briefly in college, who had gone on to become a murderer, and who apparently wasn't even really human.

"Is there something wrong, Mr Agent?"

Dee's voice broke into his distracted thoughts, and he started. "Uh, no. I'll do that now, then, I guess. I assume you're staying long enough to need them," he added, watching Dee's face, and seeing it start to go to that smiling, apathetic mask, added, "Hey." Stern as it was, it got Dee's attention, and he looked at his feet, instead, not quite willing to let Vesca see his face, but at least appreciative that Vesca found his defense mechanism a trifle disturbing.

"As long as you will have me, Mr Agent," he said, and as one the crows burst into raucous laughter, scaring the crap out of Vesca and making Dee glare at them with startling ferocity, and something like a pout. "You are all so very witty," he told them dryly, and they all started croaking again, until Dee flapped his arm at them impatiently. "Oh, get out," he said, exasperation plain in his voice, and Vesca stared at his face, intrigued by what he was pretty sure was the faintest hint of a blush.

“What was that about?” he asked, and was rewarded with a troubled expression and a faint shake of Dee’s head as he slipped past Vesca in the doorway.

“Nothing of importance,” he sniffed. “Crows are vulgar creatures.” This was slightly louder, as though the birds were still close enough to hear him. Vesca raised an eyebrow.

“Vulgar, huh?” he pressed, following Dee back to the couch. The blankets Vesca had used last night were folded at one end of the couch, their respective mugs on the table in front of them. Dee propped his son between them, smiling encouragingly when the kid reached out and grabbed onto his wrist, and retrieved his mug with his free hand. Vesca considered enforcing his no-hot-liquid-around-the-baby rule, then realised that the tea was probably lukewarm by now anyway. He reached for his coffee, sipped, and made a face. Yup. Yeuch. “Vulgar how?”

Dee glared at him. “Vulgar in the manner of all your very best college friends,” he said sweetly, and went back to paying attention to D while Vesca rolled his eyes. “As though there were more than one meaning to the word, Mr Agent, honestly...”

Vesca ignored the exasperation. Crows were being vulgar about Dee staying in his apartment, and Dee had sort of maybe very slightly blushed. That was... interesting. Interesting in a way that made his stomach twist, not quite anticipation, but definitely not nausea.

“Well, you had a good right hook when you knew my college friends,” he reasoned absently. “No reason crows shouldn’t get a taste of it. Vulgarity’s vulgarity, after all.” And after a few moments of Dee watching him with both eyebrows raised, as though Vesca’s words had both surprised and pleased him, Vesca remembered what it was he’d been trying to do before the entire crow thing.

“Right,” he said. “I’m going shopping. Be back soon.”

*

There was one girl behind the counter that always seemed to be there when Vesca came through the checkouts – so much so that he no longer needed to flip his credit card so she could see his signature. The third time he’d come through, she’d grabbed his cigarettes before he even had to ask for them, and introduced herself as April. Today she cocked an eyebrow at his purchases. “I know it’s been a week, but you can’t tell me this is all for you,” she grinned, and Vesca laughed a little nervously.

“No,” he admitted. “Unexpected guests. A friend from college, y’know, in a bit of a tight spot...” He trailed off, uncertain of how much of this he really wanted to explain, especially in a supermarket. “He and his kid are staying with me for a while.”

“Aw,” she said appreciatively, keying in a carton of milk without a glance toward her register. “That’s real nice of you, Mr Howell. Are you takin’ time off work?”

“Uh, no.” Vesca gave her his card and watched as she jerked the card press over it. She didn’t ever look vicious until she used that thing, it was kind of amazing. “I think they’re staying longer than I can afford to go on holiday.”

“Well, maybe I’ll see him around,” she said, smiling as she waited for him to sign. “You tell him to say hello to April when it’s his turn to do the shopping.”

“Sure,” Vesca agreed, unable to imagine Dee hauling five or six paper bags in addition to the baby, and nodded in farewell as he struggled toward the combination cobbler/watchsmith/locksmith booth in the middle of the center’s court. He’d dropped in his key before the shopping trip, assuming it would all be done around the same time he was, but when he dumped his groceries on the counter and told the guy behind the counter his surname, the guy just shook his head and told him to come back in half an hour.

Vesca took his groceries to the car, and scuffed back and forth in front of the locksmith for about five minutes before realising that this was hardly an appropriate use of his time. There was a tiny little store down the other end of the center that sold special teas and tonics and all sorts of weird junk that Vesca didn’t have any use for, but he was pretty sure that Dee would appreciate something like that better than Vesca’s rather mundane (and probably stale into the bargain) pack of teabags.

The woman manning that counter was about half his height, withered, and probably legally blind. He had the distinct impression that Dee would have gotten on with her famously, but he was willing to bet she’d go for anyone who spoke her native language. “Tea,” he said without preamble. “Good Chinese tea.”

She squinted at him as though trying to ascertain if he was joking, and, having decided he was not, turned and pulled a cannister from the wall behind her. She put three scoops in a little foil bag, creased it precisely, and said, “Fourteen dollar.”

Vesca very nearly asked if she was serious, but bit his tongue. “And some peppermint tea, if you’ve got it,” he said, very steadily, and she turned to grab a different cannister, another foil bag, and this time proclaimed, “Eight dollar. Twenty-two dollar total.”

There were little coloured dolls lined all along the counter, adorned with ribbons and bells. What caught Vesca’s eye was, he thought, the Chinese equivalent of maraccas. He added this to his pile, figuring D might appreciate something other than his father’s fingers to keep him entertained, and the little old lady furrowed her brow at him suspiciously before rounding his total to an even twenty-five dollars. He paid her, and got the hell out, just in time to see the bastard at the key-cutting booth trying to either close for the afternoon, or slip out to a lunch break – got the keys, paid another fifteen for the privilege, and stormed back to the carpark wondering why the hell he bothered.


	8. Part 7

The apartment was dark and quiet when Vesca returned, and for a moment he felt a gut-wrenching panic; it had happened again, the bastard had just up and left again without a word, without an anything, and--

"Welcome home, Mr Agent."

His fears were proved groundless as Dee slipped inside the sliding door from Vesca's balcony, smiling gently as he slid it closed behind him. He was still wearing Vesca's sister's jeans. Vesca stalked toward him scowling, mouth already open to tell Dee exactly what the hell he thought about him for scaring him like that, and then Dee frowned at him curiously.

"Is something wrong?"

...and Vesca realised that, for the love of god, the kid was probably just sleeping, which was why the lights were all off, and Dee had probably just been outside communing with his herbs and Washington's owls. He shook his head, angry at his own stupidity, and dumped his shopping on the bench.

"Nothing," he said shortly. "Is meat all you're eating, because I bought other stuff in case." He extracted a packet of donuts from one of the bags and sat it on the bench, and watched with a satisfied sort of smirk as Dee's expression misted over.

"Oh, no," Dee fluttered. "The meat was simply an emergency measure, Mr Agent, since I had not eaten in some time, although I will require more iron than I usually do to make up for the regular blood loss." He picked up the donut package, extracted one of the powdered, sticky treats, and bit into it daintily. His eyes closed in obvious bliss, and when the donut came away from his face, there was powdered sugar on either side of his mouth. Vesca snorted, and went back to unpacking his groceries.

"Got you some tea, too," he said, more easily than he might have had Dee not been lost in a sugar-induced world of his own. He set both packets on the bench, and put the fish thing next to it. "Oh, and your key." That was slightly gruffer. Fortunately, Dee was still not quite paying attention, and he could get away with just setting it down on the bench before turning away to clear the old food out of his refrigerator and restock it with the fresh stuff.

He was halfway through this job when Dee finished his donut, washed his hands, and actually picked up Vesca's purchases. The key, for the moment, he left. It would be fine to carry it in the inner-sleeve pocket of his robe, but with these American clothes, it would be far better to wait until he had it in on a string. He was quite careless enough with these things as it was, mostly because he had never needed to concern himself with them. Keys were not necessary when any of his pets - or his plants - were more than capable of opening a door from the inside for him.

He stared at the packets for a moment, then glanced toward Vesca, still arranging vegetables in his refrigerator. Surreptitiously, he opened the packet and inhaled, smiling softly and letting his eyes drop closed as the familiar scent of jasmine tea. Vesca had done well, if he could find such a think on a Sunday, and at this time of day. The other packet, when he opened it, seemed to flood him with its scent, and he leaned back against the bench with a sigh of contentment. "You are far too thoughtful, Mr Agent." He inhaled again, head tilting back slightly, eyes still closed. "You must have a memory for these things." He creased the packet precisely, and laid it on the bench again, his peaceful expression becoming playful once again. "But you shouldn't start out by spoiling me, Mr Agent," he added coquettishly to the back of Vesca's head. "I'll start expecting things."

Vesca was abruptly glad that he was still buried to the elbow in his vegetable crisper. "'Cause you don't expect things anyway," he responded, voice remarkably steady given the interesting revelation of the crows, and the teasing husk in Dee's voice now that he'd been offered sugar and tea. And with that simple sentence, he could feel the amusement evaporate from the Chinese man. He turned, caught sight of Dee's troubled expression, and frowned. "What?"

"I am sorry to cause you inconvenience, Vesca," said Dee, not looking at him, but at least not reverting to his mask. "I understand that I will, simply by being here, but I do not wish to..." He paused, licked his lips, and while he was apparently trying to decide on words, Vesca sighed, and pointed at the bench.

"Eat your donuts," he said tiredly. "I don't have time for inconveniences." By which he meant that Dee was pretty obviously not an inconvenience, or at least, not a convenience he didn't, on some level, want, because he was pretty sure that if anyone else had turned up on his doorstep telling him they had murdered someone, he would have gone to the police by now. Or arrested them himself.

He could feel Dee's eyes on him as he returned to the bench to deal with the last of the groceries, and when he got there, he was kind of surprised to find that Dee had reached out and set his hand lightly on Vesca's forearm. He looked up, into Dee's face, and tried not to be started when Dee looked back at him with perfect seriousness and no attempts to flinch.

"There is nothing I can do to repay the opportunity you have granted my son," he said. "For the moment, there is much that I must ask of you. But as I told you once before... if ever you require my assistance, Vesca Howell, I will hear you."

“Are you going to kiss me again?” Vesca's voice was barely a whisper, barely a breath, and Dee's tongue darted out momentarily to wet his lips.

"Would you like me to kiss you, Vesca Howell?"

Vesca swallowed, took a sharp breath through his nose, and looked down at the groceries again. Dee had not quite expected him to need to think about it. He stepped back, looked down at the bench and the packets of tea, the donuts, the... Dee stared. His hand went out. He picked up the carved wooden fish, shook it gently, and smiled at a tiny fall of bells.

"Did you buy this for D?" he asked, charmed even as Vesca blocked or at least did not encourage his advances. The human nodded, cleared his throat.

"Didn't look like you had much with you in the way of toys," he said, slightly hoarse. "So..."

Dee watched him squirm. Stepped forward again. Raised his hand to Vesca's shoulder, and pressed firmly until Vesca was standing with his back to the bench, and Dee was standing in front of him.

Before the man could protest, Dee's left hand came to rest on the side of Vesca's face, and, as Dee leaned forward, stood on tiptoe, the hand slid backward to curve long, delicate fingers into the nape of Vesca's neck.

Vesca closed his eyes when Dee's lips touched his, as politeness dictated, and did not try to move as Dee held them there. His mouth was soft, and his tongue was a slow, gentle warmth along Vesca's lower lip. Barely three seconds long, no suction, no touching other than the cool hand on his neck, his shoulder, and Vesca’s chest felt like it was about to explode. Dee withdrew as quietly as he had approached, face calm, eyes a triangulation of relief and fondness and, perhaps, uncertainty. He looked steadily into Vesca’s face, and the uncertainty disappeared.

Which was maybe the most heart-stopping thing Vesca had ever experienced.

“I am grateful, Vesca Howell,” Dee said softly. “Please sit down. I will take care of dinner.”

In absence of higher mental processes, Vesca did so.

*

Waiting for dinner to be cooked might have made Vesca feel a bit weird, since this was his apartment, his kitchen, had the kiss not already done such a good job of making things weird.

It was a pretty similar weirdness, though, he reflected, trying to watch the television, and every three minutes finding that his eyes had slid sideways to where Dee was slipping from stove to fridge to pantry and back again, his hair untied, but plaited loosely down his back so that it stayed out of his face. Similar in that, while both things were sort of... invasive, and... kind of disturbing, if he really thought about it... it was still... kind of pleasant.

To have someone in his kitchen, other than him. Cooking him something.

Not that Vesca wasn't perfectly capable of cooking for himself. But being from a family where the four kids hung around near the kitchen and waited for Ma Howell to finish so's they could set the table and call their father in from the shed, it felt weird to be in a kitchen all alone, and it always had, ever since he moved here. It was deceptively nice to have someone else in the place. Made it feel a little more like home.

He tore his eyes away from Dee, who was shaking a frypan as though he'd spent half his life as a chef in a busy kitchen, and stared ferociously at the television. He really, really, really could not afford to be thinking about that right now. Dammit, why the hell was it that Dee had to scare the crap out of him every time he-- no, that wasn't even it. What the hell did Dee have to go and kiss him for, anyway? Vesca despaired quietly, eyes locked on the newscaster. Had the guy never heard of a simple 'thankyou'?

If the contracts the Bureau had copies of were any indication, a part of his mind pointed out, then probably not.

Jesus H. Christ. The things Vesca got himself into.

But was that all it was, then? Gratitude? Some kind of fucking payment? Dee had never struck him as a... Jesus, he felt bad even thinking about applying the word 'whore' to Dee, even in his head. He substituted it for 'hooker', spent a few moments feeling miserable and filthy, and then abandoned the idea altogether. He was almost glad when D started crying, barely audible over the sound of Vesca's crappy cooktop, and Dee jerked at the sound, glanced over his shoulder at Vesca, still stirring things around in the pan as though they'd explode if they sat still too long.

Vesca nodded and stood without saying anything, strolling down the hall and pushing open his door. The baby had kicked off all its blankets and was waving its arms determinedly. He couldn't see too well in the dark, but he was willing to bet the kid was red in the face. "Hey, now, that won't do," he said, automatically settling into the talking-to-babies voice, low and calm and lilting. "Gonna hurt yourself if you keep on yelling like that, kiddo."

He scooped D up, grimaced as the baby's wails did not abate immediately, and groped around on the bed for his blankets. He draped them awkwardly over D and went out into the hall again, bobbing slightly with every step. The baby was unconvinced by his attempts to lull it.

“This’s kind of weird for you,” he murmured as he went along the hall. “You don’t like me any more, is that it? I thought we were getting along pretty well, kiddo, I bought you a present today and everything.”

He reached half-heartedly for the wooden fish as he came into the kitchen, but Dee flicked the stove deftly off and held out his arms expectantly. Vesca was pretty sure it wasn't his imagination, that Dee looked worried.

"'s the matter?" Vesca asked, slightly less comfortable as he bent his knees in order to transfer the child into his father’s embrace. Dee’s eyes only met his for a split second before dropping away to watch the living room behind him.

“Nothing, Mr Agent,” he said vaguely. “You’ll need to serve yourself, I’m afraid.” He bowed his head over D, apparently heedless of the noise the kid was making, his eyes closing and one hand cupping the back of the baby’s head, scrunching softly at his hair. He was humming as he left the kitchen, murmuring in Chinese by the time he hit the couch, and from what Vesca could see of his movements when Dee went out onto the balcony, he was singing softly while he swayed back and forth in front of Vesca’s herbs.

He turned away the second that he thought he saw leafy tendrils curling up Dee’s hips toward the baby.

To his shock, Dee’s cooking was not perfect. It was... Vesca was pretty sure that his cooking was better, and that just weirded him out to no end. Dee just... seemed like the sort of person who would know his way around a kitchen. Especially if, as he said, he had something like three hundred years’ experience.

It didn't taste bad, though, and admittedly their tastes were sort of different. Vesca didn't make stir-fries too much, either, which might account for it, too. He sat down again in front of the television and tucked in, not particularly enthusiastic, but hungry all the same. D's wails were quieting slowly as the minutes passed (Christ, what were his neighbours going to think) and when he glanced outside, Dee was facing the view, still rocking slowly from one foot to the other, his head bowed over the child. The long plait was beginning to fray - there were only four or five inches where the strands were still interwoven.

Vesca looked back at the television stubbornly. If he wanted to come in, he'd come in. And if he wanted to stay out there, singing just loud enough that Vesca knew he was singing, but softly enough that Vesca never caught a hint of melody or words, and relying on the plants for comfort instead of Vesca, well, he'd do that. And that was fine. It was fine.

He finished his dinner and, feeling vaguely guilty, left the bowl in the sink while he went briefly to the door to ask if Dee wanted him to leave some in a bowl for him. Dee didn't speak - the second Vesca had started talking, D had squirmed and made an irritable mewl, as though he might start yelling again - only shook his head slowly so as not to startle the child any more than strictly necessary.

Frowning, and not quite sure why he was taking a baby's fickleness so personally, Vesca returned to the kitchen and stored the remains of Dee's stir-fry in a few take-away containers, crammed them into his now overflowing fridge. Maybe he'd been a little overenthusiastic in his purchases - Dee was a whole extra person, true, but this week was hardly going to be quiet at the Bureau, and it wasn't as though Dee ate much, anyway, just often - like a bird. Dee was still outside by the time he was done with the dishes, and now that Vesca had started thinking about work, it was sort of all he could think about. He went back to the sliding door and poked his head out, tried to keep his voice low as possible so he wouldn't disturb them, but D squirmed fitfully in his sleep anyway.

"You all right if I take a shower?" he murmured, and Dee turned to face him slowly, still rocking slowly from side to side. He nodded once, face unreadable, and Vesca frowned. Not at Dee. At the baby. D looked a lot smaller than he had half an hour ago. "Is he..."

Dee's cool, calm expression wavered for a moment, but the mask stayed determinedly in place, and for a moment Vesca was annoyed about it. And then he remembered the circumstances of their first kiss, the fact that Dee had been crying to receive a letter from his little bro--

Something clicked.

His little brother. Who had lived with his grandfather. A letter from whom had caused Dee to cry. And thank Vesca. Way more than he’d thought was necessary at the time.

"That's... Xiao Di, isn't it."

Dee froze. Hesitantly, he nodded. "Yes," he confirmed aloud, and his voice was strained and husky. Vesca considered his next question carefully, before deciding there was no better way to phrase it.

"Didn't he used to be big enough to... write to you?"

Dee looked cornered. He licked his lips, and bowed his head, and for a few long moments, said nothing at all. Then, "He was born incomplete." It emerged in a dry whisper, barely words, and D began to squirm again, as though he could sense his father's distress. Vesca started forward, and stopped, not even certain of what it was that he wanted to do. Dee motioned with one hand, and Vesca moved back to let him into the apartment again, followed him to the couch.

"Our bodies are not like your bodies, Mr Agent," Dee said, in a voice hollow with practiced practicality. "Right now, my son is little more than a soul. Normally, when a child is born to my kind, its parent dies. And the parent's spirit forms the child's first spark of life, its... stepping stone, if you will, into forming a life of its own."

"But your father didn't give up his life to have you. And you didn't give up yours to have D. So..." Vesca waited for a long time for an answer that did not seem forthcoming, staring at his hands, and when he looked up at a sharp inhalation, discovered that Dee's eyes were closed, his lips trembling, his brow creased, one hand pressed almost desperately over his mouth as he attempted to stifle his grief. D opened his mouth and settled into a really good wail again, and before he realised it, Vesca was reaching out, pulling them both forward, wrapping his arms around Dee's shoulders and pressing his forehead into the top of Dee's head.

"Hey, hey," he started, soothing as if he was talking only to the baby, and then had no idea what else to say. Dee's shoulders spasmed under his arm, and he gasped a damp breath past his fingers, still struggling to maintain control. "Hey, now," Vesca said again, rubbing his hand up and down Dee's spine, and finally, after a few minutes, after a few careful breaths, Dee was ready to speak again.

"You are right. We did not. I did not realise, when I... that it was what had..." Dee swallowed, kissed D's forehead, made a few half-hearted soothing sounds toward the child, and then gave it up as a lost cause. "Because of this, we are... connected. I hurt him, when I killed my father. As I hurt myself. But he is a little more whole, now, than he was. As am I.” He gulped another deep, steadying breath, and then finished, “But he is not whole enough.”

Vesca felt his stomach clench. “And... what do you think you have to do, to make him whole?”

Dee didn't answer. For long enough that Vesca's hand, stroking up and down his spine, scooted up to his shoulder again, and squeezed. Maybe harder than he'd intended. "Dee?"

Dee shook his head slowly. "I don't know. I need more time. More research. What he needs is blood, memory, life, but I don't know how to give it to him without giving up myself. I'm not even sure if I can give my life up without creating yet another..." He stopped speaking abruptly, sat trembling again, and Vesca felt the cold pit in his stomach getting deeper and more hollow. He hoped to hell that he was not about to lose all of Dee's carefully cooked dinner.

"...but, your father didn't..."

Silence. Vesca took a deep breath.

"You're telling me... he did? He left a... another child behind."

Dee took a ragged breath. "He may have. I... sometimes I think I feel... but I couldn't take him. I could not keep him with me, I could not bear to keep him with me, Vesca, I could not bear it." Two tears slipped down his pale cheeks, and then a third followed, and a fourth, and Vesca had no idea what to say, no idea what to do, except that the baby was still crying, and that had to stop, and so did Dee.

"You said he was in... a different world," Vesca prompted, concentrating too hard on working all this out to feel like an idiot. "What else... is there any way for him to still be alive, or is that just... it?"

"I told you, Mr Agent," Dee said, voice ragged. "I told you. The pet shop... the kingdom... I destroyed it when I murdered him. And there will be nothing for either of us until that power is restored."

Vesca's head was starting to hurt, but at least talking about magic power or whatever seemed to be taking Dee's mind a little away from his father. "And you need to restore it." It wasn't a question, not quite, but Dee nodded, and pressed the back of his hand to one eye for a moment, then the other, ridding himself of tears, levelling out his breathing again.

"I know of nothing else to do," he said. "But my son... my son comes first, Vesca, and that is... another reason that I came to you." His violet eyes were unbearable at this distance, lashes still clotted with the remnants of tears. "I knew--"

He never finished his sentence. Vesca kissed his forehead, hardly thinking about it, squeezed his shoulder and then moved on to stroke Dee's hair, fingers untangling the little that remained of the braid. Dee leaned forward to rest his forehead on Vesca’s collarbone. He only stayed there for a few seconds, and as far as Vesca could tell it was more for support and to hide for a few seconds than anything else. But in those few seconds, D’s wailing faltered, and Vesca gave him a weak grin.

“There we go,” he said again, unsure of who he was directing the croon towards. “That’s better, isn’t it.”


	9. Part 8

The next morning saw them both awake at a similar hour, which most of Vesca's colleagues would have called ungodly, but Vesca had never been one to lie around in bed outside of his designated sleeping hours. The amount of sleep he'd missed out on in his life, there was no way in hell he'd be catching up any time soon, so what was the point, right? He survived on what he could catch, and napping during the day was out of the question.

The conversation over breakfast was a little stilted, but Vesca figured that was pretty normal, given that neither of them was particularly given to small talk, anyway. Dee offered hesitantly to cook him something more substantial, which he declined on the grounds that he didn't need much to get going, and besides, he could cook for himself if he wanted to. Dee looked as though he might be about to argue, so Vesca tipped back his coffee cup and drained it manfully. For all that he hated the stuff, the underlying bitterness did a better job of waking him up than tea ever did.

He left a fifty dollar note next to the phone, uncertain of whether Dee would really need anything, would want to go out or stay in or whatever, and once he'd got his wallet and keys and briefcase together, he gave a little wave. "Be back around six," he offered with a shrug. Dee nodded, face unreadable.

"Very well, Mr Agent. We will be here."

It occurred to Vesca while he waited for the lift to come that he really kind of hoped that that was true.

The drive in was surprisingly pleasant; a glance at his watch confirmed his suspicion that he'd left a little earlier than usual. He supposed the light coming into the apartment of a morning was a lot more noticeable from the couch, and waiting for the alarm had always made him antsy. Dee had only gotten up three times in the night that he'd heard (and he was pretty sure he'd heard them all; it'd take a long time for Vesca to learn to sleep through small children again, he figured) but he didn't feel as though he'd slept any more than he had the night before. Not that that was much of a change from his usual sleep schedule, but it still made him grind his teeth a little bit. He was decent at functioning on only a few hours of sleep - well, he'd had to be, hadn't he? But that didn't change the fact that not getting any sleep messed with your head after a while, and that wasn't exactly something he wanted to test, especially not in the lab.

Especially since his perpetually tired (if well-groomed) appearance had made him the weary butt of many a joke regarding his nighttime activities. Which would have been fine in college, but was slightly less so in a reputable crime lab like the Bureau's level four.

As usual, though, he was the first one in the lab, with a blessed twenty minutes of peace and quiet and sorting through his papers, taking down the messages that had been left on the lab phone and organising himself for the day before Andy came in through the door - backwards, carrying a box containing paperwork, four plastic baggies containing, Vesca noted as he moved closer, a piece of bloody cloth, a similarly bloody piece of china, a swab that clung stickily to either side of the bag, and finally his lunch.

"Morning Howell," he grinned as he slid sideways into his desk, dumping the box, and then scooping up all of the bags to fling them haphazardly into the lab refrigerator. "You look as if you had a great weekend, as usual. How does a guy as sober as you get so lucky?" It was harmless musing - it came his way all the time - but for some reason it made Vesca frown more than usual this morning.

"I'm not the one who's married, Andrews," he pointed out, and moved on to business as briskly as he could. Gordon and Luke would be in shortly, and he didn't want to waste any more time than he already had - the weekend probably should have been spent going over the last week's results, and filing them. "Anything interesting come in over the weekend?"

Andy shrugged, flipped through a few of the folders in his box, and made as if to throw it to Vesca. Vesca gave him a look, and got up to retrieve it, so as to spare the equipment Agent Andrews' dreadful aim. He opened the folder and flicked through the pages absently as the other man spoke. "Not really. I ran into Philips in the foyer and he's still trying to get us a sample from the riverside case. Y'know. With the abattoir." He mimed an ice pick, and Vesca resisted the urge to furrow his brow at the older man again. Andrews had been in the Bureau a lot longer than Vesca had, but he'd never lost his quirky sense of humour. Come to think of it, Vesca mused, the lab work had probably only helped preserve it.

"I know with the abattoir," he confirmed instead, and nodded at nothing in particular on the page. Andrews grinned at him.

"Hey, you can always help me with my filing," he said, winningly, and Vesca turned on the spot to head back toward his desk.

"I've got enough of my own to be getting on with," he said, and tried not to wince - he could practically hear Andy's jaw drop.

"What, did you actually have a great weekend?" The other man demanded incredulously. "You didn't finish it all up already? Usually you have everything labelled and on its way into storage by now."

Vesca sighed, resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose in an attempt to stifle the emerging headache. "I had an unexpected guest." And just as Andy opened his mouth to crow, added, "Not a 'great weekend'." Although it hadn't been bad, exactly, when he thought about it, which should probably be a warning sign in and of itself. "I didn't have time."

Andy looked mildly disappointed, and stood again to distribute the rest of the contents of his box around to the other desks in the narrow room - Gordon's the thickest of them all, Luke's just overflowing with unlikely-looking evidence bags, since he was mystical and weird and remarkably good at his job anyway. "What sort of guests?" he asked. "Family? Old girlfriend?"

Vesca shrugged, uncomfortable. He should have just said he hadn't slept. His opinion on that only solidified as Luke came in and raised a hand in greeting, shoulder bag rather than briefcase dangling from his hand. "Just someone I knew from college. Having a few family problems, decided I was as good as anyone, more or less."

"Oh." Andy looked uneasy for a second, as though he hadn't expected anything that awkward. "You don't sound too pleased about it. How long's he hanging around?"

Vesca shrugged again, and tried to look like he was focusing as Luke crossed the lab, struggling to remove a sweater without losing his glasses. "No idea. Not like I'm home to keep him company, so probably not that long."

Luke smiled, gentle and freckled and entirely too mellow for a lab assistant with hair messed up by his attempts to remove his own clothing neatly. "You say that like he hangs on your every word, Vesca," he said, easing into the conversation with a light and harmless taunt. Nettling rather than truly poisonous. In a lot of ways, he sort of reminded Vesca of Dee. Dee was a lot brisker in his manner, but overall their philosophies seemed similarly mismatched with the setting. He supposed that showed what he knew, though, because Luke was more or less a genius, and Dee had been as well. Huh.

Vesca snorted before he could stop himself. "You couldn't get further from the truth," he said, shaking his head. "I'm pretty sure he's never listened to a goddamn thing I've said."

Except the weight of Dee's shoulder on his collarbone belied that sentiment, now, as did the fact that he had slowly regained his usual composure after a few minutes of Vesca's nervous, but oddly natural, croon. He focused on the papers until he was sure that Andy and Luke had moved on to bigger and better things, and after a few minutes studying the first of seven briefings, he stood and moved into the freezer for a look at his first 'patient' of the day.

Arkham, Meg (Female, 42) had already been autopsied in theatre nine, but there was reportedly an unidentified chemical compound discolouring her fingernails and her back teeth. Vesca snapped on some gloves, unzipped the body bag, and immediately wished that he had not - she was by no means fresh. He picked up her hand, grimacing at the soft, half-rotted flesh, and took a look at her fingernails. They were orange. He replaced the hand at her side, squeezed open her jaw, and took a look at her teeth. Also orange. Well, that was interesting. He grabbed the briefing, frowned over it for a few more seconds, and then set about scraping things into jars and tubes and scribbling the few logical thoughts he had about his mystery compound.

He felt slightly ridiculous hoping that, despite his previous interest in the files on Count D, the compound in question had nothing to do with an animal that may or may not actually exist.


	10. Part 9

By the end of the day, he was pretty sure that the compound had nothing to do with an animal and everything to do with the woman being suffocated with something way too large to fit in her mouth - her jaw'd been dislocated, and then relocated, to insert it. The autopsy report had noted bruising, but nothing like that. He called the agent in charge, left a message, moved on. By lunchtime he had samples simmering in four different solutions, and had moved on to comparing hairs and blood types from a string of burglaries across three states.

By three o’ clock that afternoon he’d confirmed that the hair at three of the crime scenes belonged to the same person, and that the fourth began to a very blond raccoon, which made no sense and also made him choke a little, and wonder where exactly that pet shop of Dee’s father’s had been for the past six months. He spent the afternoon listening to Luke ramble companionably to his petri dishes and sorting through the rest of last week’s papers, checking that everything was signed and dated and trying not to think about the raccoon hair too much, because sure he could ask, but where the hell would that get the investigation team? The human hair was a solid enough lead, as long as it didn’t belong to the gallery owner, which seemed kind of unlikely given that as far as Vesca could tell from the brief, they were all about two hundred miles apart.

It sat there in the back of his mind and niggled at him all the way home, though, so by the time he got back to the apartment, he had lost whatever good mood his productivity might have left him in, and was bordering on grumpy. At least it was pretty plain that Dee was in the apartment this time, though, so no heart attacks were necessary there – there was a good smell drifting through the apartment, and Dee’s voice calling over the top of it, absent but warm enough, “Welcome home, Mr Agent.”

Vesca flipped his briefcase up onto the counter, expecting to see Dee in the kitchen, but the other man was sitting on the couch, newspaper open in front of him, pen held as if it were a brush. There was a crow on his other shoulder, and a crow on Vesca’s coffee table, and both of them seemed to be in animated conversation with baby D, propped up on his sofa cushions. Vesca stared at them all for a few seconds, and gave into the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“Dee, why are there crows in my apartment?”

The crows looked at him before Dee did. And when the Chinese man did eventually look up, it was blankly, as though he had forgotten the question. “Oh,” he said vaguely. “Don’t be alarmed, Mr Agent, they are very clean.” One of the birds cawed, apparently in agreement, and gave Vesca what he was pretty sure was a cocky expression. He resisted the urge to scowl back at it. His fingers went to his tie, unknotting, because leaving it tied was a kind of laziness that Vesca had never approved of, and he stepped closer to the couch to see what Dee was reading about. Jobs, it looked like, and that was enough to startle another question from him.

“You’re looking for a job? Already?”

Dee glanced up again, almost in annoyance. “Yes, Mr Agent. I told you, I have the research that will help my son. What I do not have is the facilities.”

Vesca gaped. “But... he’s... you can’t take him to work with you, and I sure as hell can’t stay home with him.”

Dee shook his head vaguely. “Please do not concern yourself, Mr Agent,” he said, focusing on the newspaper once again. “It will not be long before he does not require constant supervision, and I wish to acquaint myself thoroughly with the market.” He did look up, then and smiled. “It has been five years, after all.”

*

The days that followed were remarkably similar, easy to fall into: Vesca would sleep badly, get up, turn off the alarm without it having to emit a single beep, have a stilted conversation with Dee (who seemed to enjoy making him growl of a morning), and head off to work, which would proceed to be work, until it was time to come home. Then he would come home, have another stilted conversation with Dee over whatever the Chinese man had cooked, and maybe watch some television (sometimes on mute, when he woke up in the middle of the night, or just couldn’t get to sleep) before Dee fed his son one last time and they all went to bed and, in Vesca’s case, failed to sleep. Rinse. Repeat.

It was Thursday before the stilted conversation became something like the conversations they had had at the SUNY labs, which meant that Dee was going to win, but Vesca was going to make a spectacular fool of himself trying to.

“You look exhausted, Vesca,” Dee said. What he did not say was that he knew Vesca had not been sleeping; that he was perfectly aware that whenever he emerged to take meat from the refrigerator in the middle of the night, Vesca was awake and simply pretending not to be. He didn’t have to. He had one eyebrow raised, his lips curved ever so slightly upward at one corner, presumably to show that he knew more than Vesca had previously thought he did, and was prepared to use that knowledge against Vesca ruthlessly should he put up a fight.

Vesca generally fought anyway.

“It has been kind of a long week, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Vesca spared him a glare and then went back to staring at the television. Some kind of game show. Vesca didn’t watch it enough to know the names of the programs. All the hosts looked the same, anyway. Dee made a silky sound, almost conciliatory, but since it was coming from Dee, definitely not that. “What?”

“This chair cannot be comfortable to sleep on,” Dee said. Vesca filled in the blanks, and scowled.

“More comfortable than the floor,” he said sourly, although privately he wasn’t so sure about that any more. There had been a knot in his neck and just under his right shoulder blade when he woke up on Wednesday and it had only tightened since. He was pretty sure that the couch was to blame. And Dee, by extension, but he’d have to be crazy to actually bring that up.

Dee laughed, low and cloying. "I wasn't talking about the floor, Vesca," he said, and this time did Vesca the dubious mercy of explaining his meaning fully, in a normal tone of voice. "You do have a double bed, and D and I do not take up very much room. Sleeping on this is a very bad arrangement to make permanent, don't you agree?"

Vesca jerked his head sideways to disagree with vehemence, and was pretty sure they both heard his neck crunch. Argument painfully derailed, he considered trying for I'm fine and decided that he couldn't back that up. "...yeah. Whatever, Dee. Just don't go complaining that I snore."

Dee looked delightedly amused. "Do you snore, Mr Agent?" He tilted his head just so, lowered his lids to there, and quirked an eyebrow. "There are far better ways to keep me awake."

Bizarrely, the return to casual flirtation was almost comforting, for all that he turned a dull red anyway. "Remind me to kick you in my sleep," he muttered. Dee only laughed.

Of course, neither of them were laughing an hour later, when the time came for them to actually go to sleep. This may or may not have had something to do with the fact that Vesca usually slept shirtless. It also may or may not have had something to do with the fact that the pajamas Dee had bought were, in fact, more of a night robe, and had probably been intended for a woman. This had been bearable while Vesca had been lying on the couch pretending to be asleep whenever Dee moved around in it, but in the semi-darkness of the bedroom, the pale pink satin was a lot more difficult to ignore.

Still, after a silent argument with himself over the bathroom sink, glaring at himself in the mirror and telling himself he was a moron, a stupid, cowardly moron, and it was just Dee and it was just sleeping for god's sake, and could you even get less mature than this-- after that argument with himself, he slid under the covers, mindful of the baby sleeping in the centre of the bed, and, after shifting anxiously for a few seconds in the darkness, muttered, "Night, Dee."

"Sleep well, Mr Agent."

God damn, it was weird to hear Dee's voice from a few feet away, in the dark, half-muffled by a pillow. Weird enough that it kept him covertly tossing and turning for long enough that Dee said, waspishly, “Perhaps it was not the couch keeping you awake, Mr Agent?”

He stilled abruptly, almost snapped a reply before he realised that Dee probably hadn’t been getting as much sleep as he was used to, lately, and huffed a sigh instead. “Yeah. Sorry. I don’t sleep well.”

Dee made a soft, considering noise. As far as Vesca could tell, his eyes were closed. “Perhaps you should try meditation, Mr Agent, if there is much on your mind.”

Vesca considered telling him that there was nothing on his mind except the knowledge that he never really slept so there was relatively little point trying, considered mentioning the fact that nine times out of ten, whenever he did get to sleep, he’d wind up running away from bird women that tried to eat him, but figured that was another thing that was relatively pointless. He sighed again instead. “Yeah. Thanks, Dee.” There was no feeling in the words, and he heard a soft, snooty sound from the other side of the mattress before the room fell quiet again, silence disturbed only by the distant sounds of traffic and the steady sounds of their breathing.

Vesca kept still after that, though, and eventually he heard Dee’s breathing even out. The baby’s was faster, but still deep and even. Vesca closed his eyes and listened to them both, trying not to twitch or anything. He smiled faintly in the darkness, counting the seconds until Dee and the baby synchronised on an inhalation, and then until they synchronised on an exhalation – about twenty seconds between each. His own breathing was slower than Dee’s, for the most part, although still erratic. Trying to time his breathing according to theirs was fruitless, and ultimately required enough concentration that he could feel himself waking up again, so he stopped it, tried to ignore his own breathing and just listen to theirs.

He didn’t realise that he was drifting just above sleep until the baby’s breathing changed slightly and brought him back towards wakefulness. D breathed strangely for a few seconds, and then let out a soft, mewling sound, and Vesca heard Dee’s breathing change almost immediately. He reached out to try to quiet the kid, certain that Dee hadn’t been asleep long enough to warrant another feeding, and was surprised to find Dee’s hand under his, rather than the baby’s blankets. He jerked back again as if stung, and felt rather than saw Dee’s eyes open in the darkness.

Dee sat up, gathered the baby in his arms, and slipped from the bed without a word. The clock behind him read 02:00 AM, and Vesca stared at its face for a few seconds, stunned. No way had he just zoned out for five whole freaking hours. A few blinks did not dispell the numbers, and to his surprise, he actually felt... pretty good. Less irritated than he usually did, come two in the morning when he hadn’t slept a wink, anyway. Marvelling slightly at how calm he felt, and mildly suspicious that it wasn’t breathing alone that had brought him to that state, Vesca stared at the ceiling and waited for the apartment’s other occupants to return to the room, to sleep, and to soothe him with their breathing.


	11. Part 10

Friday did not pass in a pleasant haze, but rather, a persistent focus, and he left the Bureau feeling strangely contained, as he always did on those rare occasions that he slept well. As a result, he was actually considering going out for a drink with Gordon and Andrews – at least until the latter pointed out the newly acquired baby seat in Vesca’s car.

“So it is an old girlfriend,” he crowed, victorious, and clubbing Vesca on the shoulder with one enormous palm. “I knew it! Although, Vesca,” he added, more soberly, “if you’re looking after someone else’s kid, you’re a bigger sucker than I ever thought you’d be.”

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘gentleman’,” Vesca retorted before he could help himself, and then shook off the hand, exasperated. “No, look, I told you. He’s a friend from college, and he’s the one with the kid. I just picked that up because I didn’t want the kid going through my goddamn windshield.”

He stabbed a finger at the window, and the car seat, and Gordon chuckled. “Way you drive, you hardly need it. Careful like my grammaw.”

“Mouth like her, too,” Andrews chipped in, and they both broke into hearty guffaws. Vesca sighed.

“Tell me I drive too carefully when you lose that to a street light,” he said, jerking a thumb at Gordon’s pride and joy, and unlocking his own vehicle. “I’ll see you bright and early Monday morning.”

Andrews groaned. “And he escapes again...” he lamented briefly. “Well, you know where to find us if you get bored. Bring your friend along. I think Pete’s is kid-friendly.”

Vesca imagined Dee’s expression on entering the bar/diner, and laughed stiffly. “Yeah, I’ll, uh... pass that along.” Only absolutely not. And not because of the distaste he could see even now on Dee’s face – more because of the black eye Dee had given the last time someone had asked if he was really a man. Andrews and Gordon might be annoying as hell on occasion, but hell if he was going to line them up for that kind of abuse.

...well, all right, it might be funny to watch. But he was willing to bet he’d be the next person introduced to that fist if he started laughing in a situation like that, so it could get to be a double-edged sword. Even if it was Dee’s fault for wearing those robes of his. At least this whole business meant he’d be wearing real clothes for once, even if he seemed pretty unimpressed by them.

Andrews must’ve been able to tell he had no intention of letting Dee know he’d been invited out drinking with Vesca’s peers, because when he got home, Dee greeted him with his mail, the news that dinner would not be long at all, and that one of Vesca’s charming friends had called (“A Mr Andrews, I believe,” Dee had added) to make sure a certain message was relayed, and in case it was not, that they were all invited out for drinks and dinner next Friday night, if they could make it, at which point Vesca choked and Dee asked whether he was well, rather insincerely.

“Fine,” he said. “I was pretty sure you wouldn’t want to go, I mean, it’s not exactly a nice place, and there’s D to think of, and—”

“Nonsense, Mr Agent,” said D with a smile like a small, discreet incendiary device. “It will be just like old times, I am sure.”

Vesca remembered some of those old times, though admittedly a lot of them were kind of blurry, and experienced a brief moment of dizzying terror. “Please don’t drink my colleagues into puddles,” he said, perhaps a little abruptly, and Dee laughed, and his smile became a little less like knives and a little more like, maybe, nipple clamps.

“Why, Mr Agent,” he said. “You forget. The only student who never had the sense to quit was you.”

*

Maybe that statement should have worried him a bit, especially since he now appeared to be sleeping according to when Dee was breathing in a certain way, which even Vesca was prepared to admit might not be entirely normal. Complaining about it struck him as ungrateful, though, so he contented himself with enjoying the sleep he was getting, and complaining instead about everything else that caught his attention, including but not limited to Dee’s need to go shopping again, Dee’s pot choice, Dee’s vegetable choices, and Dee’s shoes.

(The last had earned him an expression of utter contempt, and the sweet suggestion that if he had nothing better to do, perhaps he could take D home and keep him occupied while Dee carried home ten kilos of potting mix, a terracotta monstrosity and seven packets of seeds by himself, since Vesca was so determined not to be helpful in the least This, in turn, had earned Vesca a withering look from a sales assistant, and so after a few moments’ indignant fury, he shut his mouth and carried.)

Probably, Dee had been joking about actually attending the dinner/drinks thing. Probably, when the time came, he would make an elegant excuse that no one, not even Andrews, could argue with, and escape from the entire ordeal. But if he didn’t... if he didn’t, Vesca wasn’t even sure who to worry about. He couldn’t think of any reason for any of the lab boys to have seen the Bureau’s files on the petshop, or on Count D. But if any of them had, or any of them did in the future, Vesca was one hundred percent certain that they would remember where they’d met Dee, and who Dee had been living with at the time, and then there went Vesca’s entire goddamn career, because the lab boys knew they’d gone to SUNY together, and SUNY would have records, and the Bureau sure as hell knew he’d worked briefly under a guy assigned to a more recent, possibly D-related case, and Vesca was willing to bet their first question would be, “Care to tell us why you were shacking up with a suspected mass-murderer?”

And then what the hell was he meant to say? ‘Actually, he only killed his dad’? Even if it didn’t go that far – and it wouldn’t, it couldn’t, because Dee wouldn’t actually go on Friday night – Vesca didn’t want Dee deciding that Gordon or Andrews or Luke were the sort of people that needed removing, because hell if Count D hadn’t quietly done away with messy people before. Maybe not directly, but that was what trained venomous snakes were for, and contracts that said, fucking, failing to milk it of venom would mean the shop’s responsibility was void.

And don’t even get him started on the morons who signed contracts like this. Fuck.

As it turned out, though, Friday ended up being the least of his worries. It was Monday that was the killer. Wasn’t that always the way?

*

Monday was the first day his alarm had actually gone off in about six months, and it gave everyone in the bed a heart attack, or at least the equivalent of a heart attack, because Vesca was still pretty sure you couldn’t parthenogenesise children and still have an actual heart, and so it was also the first morning since Dee had arrived that the baby woke up screaming and Vesca was given reproachful looks from the moment he opened his eyes to the moment he very carefully did not slam the door on his way out. He probably should have known that a day with a start like that should have been given up as a bad job, its existence ignored completely. He would turn up to work on Tuesday, be mildly surprised when someone told him it was not Monday, and blame a sleeping disorder no one ever really asked about and he used as an excuse so infrequently that no one n his department particularly cared.

He didn’t, of course. Vesca was a responsible and dedicated young man with a career and now a family to think of (sorta) and he worked when he was meant to work and quite often also a little bit outside that. But he did spent the rest of the week thinking that Monday had been, in general terms, a very bad idea.

To begin with, Special Agent Reynolds came to him demanding to know how in hell it could be raccoon hair when it had been found right in the middle of a very prestigious art gallery – a conversation Vesca had been anticipating and dreading ever since he’d finished the analysis in question.

“Maybe it was on someone’s shoe or clothes or something, I don’t know,” Vesca told the other man, raising his hands quellingly and wishing desperately for a coffee and a cigarette. “I’m just telling you, it’s raccoon hair. Really pale raccoon hair.”

“An albino raccoon,” Reynolds pushed, scepticism oozing from his pores. Vesca growled.

“No, not albino. Does this look fucking white to you? It’s just a weird colour. But it’s definitely from a raccoon. I didn’t find any bleach, but maybe it’s a hair extension, something like that.” He waved the bag. “Could be a fucking paintbrush, for all I know. Is your suspect an artist?”

Reynold’s reddened in a way that made Vesca instantly sure he was right on the money. “What the fuck do you know, Howell,” he growled, and snatched the bag back. From there it was quick, curt conversation until Reynolds stalked out the door and Vesca sat down at his desk again, massaging his temples and wondering aloud why Special Agents had to be such assholes.

“Don’t say that,” Luke comforted absently, setting down another mug of coffee on the corner of Vesca’s desk, absorbed in another folder full of files but aware enough to spin the mug so that its handle was facing Vesca. “That was good thinking. Maybe you ought to be out investigating instead of in here.”

“I’d need lessons,” Vesca muttered, swiping the coffee. “In being a complete asshole. Thanks for this, Luke.”

He smiled his gentle smile. “Don’t mention it. Also, your orange stuff is incubating nicely. It’s looking a little bit like methophenyladregathenine—” (at least, Vesca thought that was what he’d said) “—but I can’t be sure until it starts putting out stalks.” He left Vesca with his coffee, trying to work out whether whatever chemical Luke had just quoted to him was meant to be one of the geek jokes he was so fond of. After a few minutes he decided it wasn’t, and went to have a look at his orange stuff, which was, indeed, incubating nicely.

It continued incubating nicely until the power went off a little after noon, killing probably about three hundred samples, and making Vesca wish probably for the first time that their wing was big and important enough to warrant its own generator. The section chief told them all that they may as well go home; there’d been some kind of surge, and nothing would be up again until at least the following day. So Vesca ground his teeth a lot, patted Luke manfully on the back while the younger man looked on the verge of tears at the thought of losing most of his work to something like this, and commiserated with Andrews about having to talk to their respective Special Agents again to pick up from square one as far as their research was concerned.

“Still, can’t get worse,” Andy said firmly as he left the elevator, raised his hand. “Call me if this isn’t fixed tomorrow, all right? I’ll know to phone ahead for Wednesday.”

“Sure thing.” Vesca waved and climbed into his car, spent a few minutes behind the wheel just... letting it go. Sure, he’d lost a few days worth of work. No problem. He hadn’t had any more calls lately, he’d just go home, get a good night’s sleep, and hope he could start again tomorrow. No problem.

Yeah, right.

He got home. He parked. He retrieved the mail from the numbered boxes out near the road, and flicked through it as he walked back toward the apartment complex. He didn’t notice the crows mobbing around the building, although he did register dimly that it was a little noisier than usual. He slit open the first envelope while he was waiting for the elevator, read the first paragraph and grunted before shuffling it to the back of the pile. Bill. They were all bills. Nothing too pricey, because he was pretty good about that sort of thing, but his credit card statement was higher than it’d been for a while. He guessed he should start expecting that, now that Dee was here.

He was still looking over the credit card statement when he unlocked his front door, and distracted as he was, it did not escape his notice that despite the absence of welcome home, Mr Agent, there was still an awful lot of noise in the apartment – and most of it was coming from crows, a dozen of which were sitting on his couch. The balcony was teeming with them. He gaped for a few seconds, then scowled and strode toward them, waving his arms to drive them away. “Hey!”

None of the birds that were inside moved. They stared back at him gravely. He was so put off by this that it took him a moment to respond to the soft voice speaking from the kitchen, presumably to him, but it was in Chinese, so he couldn’t tell. He turned around to tell Dee that for the last time he didn’t speak the goddamn language, and stopped dead, because Dee was lying on his kitchen floor, hair and blood fanning grotesquely out around him on the tile, and Vesca’s next thought was no. No, no.

“Jesus,” he said, and then, “Dee.” The mail fluttered to the floor, and in half a second he was in the kitchen, kneeling next to Dee’s prone form (god, he looked so small lying out cold like this, just out cold, just out cold, c’mon, Dee), feeling for a pulse and suddenly glad Dee’s wrists were too slender for even the tightest cuffs available in a man’s shirt. There was a pulse, but it was thready; he could barely even feel it, though Dee’s veins were easily visible through his pale, pale skin. Vesca swallowed, moved his hands to Dee’s head, applying gentle pressure, checking for damage. Nothing. He was perfectly unharmed, except for the blood everywhere. Where had it come from? Jesus.

“Dee?” he said again, and realised then that he was interrupting another voice, a softer, higher voice – the same one he had mistaken for Dee’s a few seconds ago. It was coming from somewhere in the vicinity of his elbow, and when he turned to locate it, he saw a child. Maybe five years old, dark hair to his chin, eyes impossibly wide and bicoloured purple and gold. He was speaking quickly, almost panicked, in Chinese, and despite how impossible he knew it was, Vesca said, “D. You’re D.”

The child heard his name, paused to gasp a breath, and started off again, small hands clenching in front of his collar bone. Vesca could see tears standing in his eyes, and raised his hand to the kid’s head before he thought about it. “D,” he said again, and stopped, wracking his brain for any bit of Chinese he might have picked up over the years and coming up completely blank. Hell. “It’s okay,” he said instead, trying to smile reassuringly, but aware of the horrible sensation of cold, half-dry blood seeping into his pants at the knee, along his shins, aware that the smile must have looked crazy and shattered and wrong. “It’s going to be okay.”

He couldn’t have just fallen over, could he? Dee didn’t... Dee didn’t just fall, it wasn’t how things worked. And his head was fine, his hands were fine, so was he healing? He always healed pretty fast after he fed the baby. Was he just trying to feed the baby? The baby wasn’t a baby any more. Vesca’s head snapped toward D, standing quietly a few feet from him, a fine tremble to his entire frame. He hadn’t been this big when Vesca had left this morning. So something had gone wrong with the feeding. Or right with the feeding. Why the fuck did Dee never fucking tell him any-fucking-thing? Or teach his children English? Jesus! What was he meant to do, ask the fucking crows?

He froze. For three and a half crazy seconds, he stared at the birds lining his couch, and seriously considered it.

And then he turned back to the kid, who at least had a brain bigger than a walnut, and held out a hand for him. “D. C’mere, kid. You need to tell me what to do.” Because if D could be a baby one minute and a five-year-old the next, then hell if Vesca was going to take Dee to a real doctor. He spoke slowly, tried to think of simple, concise gestures for how do I make him better? He settled for pointing at Dee, then spreading his hands in the universal gesture of helpless bewilderment. “What happened?”

D watched him closely for a few seconds, lower lip trembling every now and then, but at least he was paying attention, at least he looked like he was tracking Vesca’s movements. And after Vesca’s third attempt at the hand-spreading gesture, and a few vague attempts to rephrase the question, D looked away from him, toward the crows on the couch, and raised his arm.

A crow flew to him, and D looked back at Vesca, expectant, and looking remarkably composed for a kid whose father was lying on the floor in a pool of (presumably his own) blood. Vesca looked at the crow, and thought there was a small part of himself curling its knees up to its chest and turning to face a corner, humming determinedly with its hands over its ears. Too damn bad for that part of his mind, he thought giddily, and said, “What happened? What do I do?”

The crow had cocked its head while Vesca was speaking, apparently listening intently, and when he was finished, it turned its head to D. A few soft caws later, and D was moving, over to the bench, reaching on tiptoes for something on the counter. Vesca stood, saw the knife lying there, and grabbed it. “This?” D nodded, and Vesca grimaced. So, Dee had been feeding the kid? What in hell had gone wrong?

But before he could ask the question, D was kneeling by his father side, opposite to Vesca. He mimed something Vesca was pretty sure he never wanted to see a child mime ever again: D slashed his right hand across his left wrist, and held it out over Dee’s face, over his mouth.

“Y-you...” That couldn’t be his voice. He sounded like an old man. Or a child. “You can’t be serious.” Dee stared at him, small fists clenching on his thighs, and mimed the act again, and Vesca sat down beside Dee in a hurry, holding the knife gingerly. Feeding Dee. Feeding Dee. Right. Of course.

"One day," he muttered, mostly to himself, "I am going to have a normal life." He held his wrist cautiously over Dee's mouth, then decided he really did not want to accidentally commit suicide, and shifted so that the fleshy part of his palm, at the base of his thumb, hovered above Dee's mouth instead. With his right hand, he tugged Dee's chin gently downward; the unconscious man offered no resistance. Vesca had a brief quarrel with himself regarding proper CPR practices, and finally scooted closer so he could lift Dee properly.

He wound up with his back braced against his kitchen cupboards, Dee practically in his lap, the arm with the knife around his shoulders, and the arm without trying to make sure Dee's head was upright enough that he wouldn't choke, because fuck if Vesca was going to explain that to police.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Okay.

He ran the heel of his hand over the blade of the knife, and blood welled up from the cut immediately. He lost some of it to Dee's shirt, but was pretty sure that Dee wouldn't notice - his shirt was bloody enough already. At first, it was just Vesca's hand pissing blood into Dee's slack mouth, gritting his teeth just a little, not because it hurt, exactly, but fuck, this was weird, and just as he was thinking that for the thousandth time, Dee's lips moved against his hand.

Vesca held his breath.

The next minute, there was the slightest flutter of a tongue against his palm, and Dee was sucking - not strongly, true, but enough to keep up the blood flow, and Vesca was pretty sure he'd never been so goddamn pleased to find blood leaving his body so quickly. It wasn't especially painful any more, just sort of burning and throbbing dully, and Vesca was just starting to wonder how much blood Dee needed, how exactly you knew when you were going to pass out from blood loss, when D removed the knife from his left hand and set it on the bench behind Vesca's head. Then he was tugging at Vesca's hand, shaking his father by the shoulder and speaking softly in Chinese again--

Dee opened his eyes. Saw D first. Said something, Chinese again (he was going to learn this fucking language, Vesca thought, hazily), and raised his arms to pull his son close to him, then blinked slowly at the blood on his arms. Noticed Vesca, purple eyes widening, lips parting, and then—

And then became apparently riveted by the sight of his own fingers in his very bloody lap. “Ah,” he said softly. “I do apologise, Mr Agent. I have bled all over your kitchen.” As though that was the only fucking problem. As though it was the kitchen that mattered, rather than the fact that Dee had bled enough to cover half the room.

“I’m going to kill you,” Vesca said, through black sparks. “When I can get up again and move fast enough to catch you, I am going to fucking kill you, and apologise to your kid, you fucking moron. And if you say one goddamn word about language—”

Dee’s fingers were on his lips, quieting him, failing entirely to quell his fury. “Mr Agent, please, I will explain when I am clean, when my son is—”

Vesca’s hand clamped on his shoulder, the other – still bleeding – held out for the younger D to take. “You are going to explain right now,” he said. “So that maybe when I get up I won’t just finish what you started this afternoon, you selfish fucking asshole, I am so glad D doesn’t speak English right now.”

Dee stared at him for a few seconds, apparently sufficiently rattled by Vesca’s currently tenuous grip of priorities not to argue. He drew D in closer, settled the child against his chest, and spoke soothingly into his hair for a few moments. The kid was trembling slightly; given the circumstances, Vesca did not find this at all strange. When he looked up again a few minutes later, he was significantly calmer, and D had stopped trembling, at least, so that was good. Dee’s hand played absently with strands of his son’s hair for a few seconds, and then he began to speak.

"You see my son now as he was just prior to the death of his grandfather," Dee said. "I told you I had dealt him a hurt - I had dealt it to us both. My power is less, now, than it was, but I am old enough, myself enough, to maintain my own form. My son has not that strength of character yet." He smiled. "Children may grow and change, Vesca, far more easily than adults can."

Vesca thought about that, and nodded. Every movement he made felt heavy and slow. "Why the blood? Why did you...?" He was so tired. The adrenalin was wearing off, and now he just wanted to sleep. It was pretty easy to guess where he was going with that, though, Vesca supposed, because Dee continued easily enough.

"Children also require more support and guidance than adults," Dee said. "The blood is that, as well as food. To restore him, I shared as much of myself as I could spare, and I suppose I gave a little more than was... sensible."

"Damn right you did," Vesca muttered, and Dee gave him a weary smile.

"Do forgive me, Mr Agent," he murmured. "I believe I have already proven just how focused I can be when it comes to my son's wellbeing."

"What the hell good does it do if he lives and he has no fucking parents?" Vesca snarled before he could help it. "Jesus Christ, Dee, what would have happened if I hadn't come home early?"

Dee gave him a look, carefully blank. "Then I suppose the crows would have begun disposing of me for you."

Vesca's throat closed. His hand clenched to white on Dee's shoulder, and he was sure it must have hurt like a bitch, but Dee said nothing, made no sound for as long as Vesca's fingers bore down on his spare pale flesh, and did not speak when Vesca had gotten ahold of himself again and let him go.

"That isn't funny, Dee." His voice sounded wrong again, dry like dead leaves, like the crows' cawing, only smaller. Quieter. And Dee sat slightly straighter in his arms, preparing to pull away, to stand up. Vesca let him go. He was too tired for this shit. Too goddamn tired. That feeling came crashing down on him again, and he was surprised to remember how heavy it was, how oppressive its weight was. Little wonder it had felt so great to get rid of it for a few days.

Dee swivelled carefully until he was sitting on his feet, and hesitated there for a few seconds, violet eyes downcast, thoughtful instead of sad, or even tired. Finally, he said, “I cannot make you understand, Vesca. I can only assure you that our understandings differ – quite vastly – and that, as I do have some experience in these matters, you could do worse than to trust me.”

He stood.

“Stay there for a moment, Mr Agent. I must speak with my son.”

He left.

He was barely even swaying.

*

“Are you well? How do you feel?”

“I am fine, father. I feel better. Are you all right? ...you are very dirty.”

“It is only blood, my son. I will deal with it as soon as I have dealt with Mr Agent. I am glad you are feeling better.”

“I am. Father, is he... you both sent me a card, once. Grandfather...”

“...it is all right to cry for him, my son.”

“...h-he seemed angry, at the time. Are you... is it all right, then, to befriend a human?”

There is a pause. It goes on for a long time. For a moment, the child fears it has asked a wrong question. “Father?”

“On this, my father and I differ, my son.” A smile in the darkness. “But humans act according to their nature, just as animals do. You would not withhold your friendship from a lion, simply because it hunted a gazelle?”

“Of course not, father...”

“Then, of course.”

*

Vesca had ignored Dee's instructions to remain there on the floor by the clotting, pungent puddle - no flowers this time, Vesca noticed. Maybe Dee had to be conscious for something like that. By the time Dee emerged, childless, from the bedroom, he had made it to the couch, now blessedly crow-free, and also astonishingly free of bird crap, though Vesca could probably have even slept in bird crap right now without too many complaints.

He'd given up on the idea of coffee pretty much the second he'd made it to his feet again, settling on a few gulped mouthfuls of water, straight from the tap, to get rid of the metallic taste/smell in his mouth. Now he was sprawled on the couch lengthways, calves propped uncomfortably on the arm rest out of the vague idea that maybe it was a good idea to keep his legs elevated, one arm over his eyes, the other held determinedly upright, tea towel wrapped around his still-bleeding hand. He heard Dee's approach only dimly, so when the Chinese man's cool hands unwrapped the tea towel, he jerked his hand away - or tried to. Dee had a surprisingly firm grip for someone who had, minutes ago, been out cold on the floor.

"What're you gyeaaagh," said Vesca, the last when he felt Dee's tongue on the heel of his hand, warm and tingling strangely for a second, and then the steady throb from the cut was gone, and Vesca squinted at his healed hand suspiciously, turned it this way and that a few times before finally asking, "Are you a vampire?"

Dee sat down on the edge of the couch, against Vesca's hip, and shook his head slowly. "Not a vampire, Mr Agent. I spoke to a pair once," he said, considering. "I suppose the female might have liked you well enough. Not for your personality, of course." He smiled. Vesca glared, hardly able to focus.

"That's nice," he said. "If you're not going to say anything useful, I'm going to sleep."

They watched each other for a few seconds, and then Dee said, "You are working tomorrow. You should rest. I will wake you in the evening for some food."

"I'm not working," Vesca tried to say, but it came out mnow’knngh and he was pretty sure that helped neither of them, and he was too tired to explain, so he nodded once and let his eyes fall closed. He felt Dee’s weight shift, thought he might have felt the lightest brush of fingers through his hair, and then he was gone, lost, drowning.

The feeling of dropping into sleep like a stone into a thick and murky river was, if not pleasant, then at least reasonably familiar.

*

There were fingers in his hair again when he woke up, or on his hair, on his forehead, smoothing, smoothing, not grabbing or holding, and he gulped a huge deep breath as though he hadn't done so for hours. Again, he'd dreamed of drowning again. God, but he hated those dreams.

"Good evening, Mr Agent." Dee's voice was soft and soothing. "Dinner is ready, if you are hungry." Vesca squinted at him, still bone-tired. If it wasn't for the dream, or the rich scent of food in the air, or the vague knowledge that, yes, eating was a good idea, he might have set his head back on the arm of the couch and just gone right back to sleep. He made an indistinct sound in the back of his throat and sat up slowly, scratching a hand back through his hair. Dee stood, gestured to indicate that Vesca should remain where he was, and stepped back toward the kitchen. Vesca's eyes followed him warily.

Dee had changed his clothes, he noticed, and the tiles were clean again. Still no flowers that he could see, and if he really looked for it, he thought he could smell bleach and floor cleaner through the food-smells in the air. He only really noticed when Dee returned with a bowl of stew that Dee's hands were red and blotched. Vesca frowned. Hadn't the idiot thought to use gloves? He took a careful mouthful of the stew, was pleasantly surprised at how good it was (or how hungry he was, one or the other), and made a soft, appreciative sound that might, with some imaginative power, have resembled a 'thankyou'. Dee's lips twitched upward momentarily. Neither of them mentioned it.

The television seemed too far away to bother turning on, so Vesca stared at its blank screen as mindlessly as if it were a program, and ate his stew with the single-minded idea that when he was done, he could get back to sleep. The drowning was still fresh in his mind, though, as were distant memories of bird-women and their grasping, clawing hands, and so when he was done with the stew, Vesca went to the kitchen - slowly - and painstakingly made himself a coffee.

Dee didn't say a word for the whole time he was in the kitchen, though as far as Vesca could tell when he was very determinedly not looking in Dee's direction, his eyes remained on Vesca the entire time. It was only when Vesca was returning to the couch that the pensive gaze really began to bother him. He glared, sat down again heavily, with a growled, "What?" out the corner of his mouth. Dee shook his head slowly, as though there was no particular reason for his constant eyeballing, and Vesca grit his teeth. "Then why are you watching me?"

Dee tried for a smirk. "Mr Agent, I think you are imagining things." He stood and glided into the kitchen, which, goddamn, did not work in slacks, deliberately avoiding eye contact, and then glancing back at Vesca and raising an eyebrow as though to suggest that Vesca was the one doing all the watching, and Dee was simply the object of attention. Which, okay, at the moment was true, but if you gave all your blood to a baby to make it grow then you were sort of asking for something like that.

"Why did you do it?" he asked. "I mean, I know why you did it, but why couldn't you just wait?" He paused, troubled, gaze flickering away from Dee and down into his coffee mug. "...is he that sick?"

Dee returned to the couch very slowly. When Vesca looked up again, his lower lip was caught gently between his teeth, not exactly fretful, but getting there. "In that small form, he was getting worse, because he was unable to support his own existence. He has a little more control, now, than he did. He can do more to maintain his... self. Although," he smiled gently. "It seems as though he has quite forgotten English."

"That's right, isn't it," Vesca mused. "He's... Xiao Di. He wrote to me, that one time, for the new year."

Dee smiled again. "That is correct. It is only to be expected, that he lost some of what his grandfather gave him. It is all right." He closed his eyes. "I will teach him again."

"Maybe you can teach him not to sell people things that eat them, while you're at it," Vesca grumbled, still into his coffee cup, and Dee shook his head as though he was being ridiculous.

"Of course, Mr Agent," he said, not quite impatient. "The pet shop is no more. Our purpose is no more." He took a slightly deeper breath. "I am glad. My son need not be raised to a life of vengeance. He need not be turned away from his father, simply because he develops common sense."

Vesca frowned, curious, wondering if he should press the bitterness in Dee's voice, and eventually deciding it was worth a shot. "What d'you mean?"

Dee started to smile his bright, blank, perfect smile, and then turned his face away instead, so that his true expression was hidden by a curtain of dark hair. "That is not important any more, Vesca," he said. "Suffice to say, my family has for generations raised its children to carry out the purpose of the pet shop. But I do not intend to do the same. I have not, since the birth of my own child." He turned back to Vesca, then, brows raised, smile firmer than it had been in some days. "Survival of the fittest must be applied universally, or not at all. Don't you agree?"

Vesca stared. That had made no discernable sense. But he supposed that Dee was usually sort of eloquently incoherent, so at very least this was a return to the norm. "Uh, sure. I guess so."

Dee smiled brightly at his bewildered capitulation. "You should get some more rest, Mr Agent," he suggested. "You should make a full recovery before work tomorrow."

Vesca rolled his shoulders, wincing at a warning crack. "I don't have work tomorrow, unless I get called in. There was a power failure this afternoon, wiped out half our lab."

"Ah," Dee said. "I was wondering why you were home so early." Vesca snorted.

"Yeah, once you'd regained consciousness, I'm sure that was the first thing on your mind." He rubbed a hand over his face. "Look, you're doing whatever you can to fix the kid. Fair enough. I understand that. I'd really appreciate it if you could not do shit like that without at least warning me. You have my num--" He blinked, grimaced. "Uh. You don't have my work extension, do you?" Well, that was his fault, at least. He’d have to write it near the phone.

Dee seemed to sense his chagrine. “D would not have thought to use a telephone,” he soothed, or tried to, but that just made Vesca’s jaw tighten.

“So, what, he would’ve just sat here waiting until you cooled off enough for the crows to tuck in?” he sputtered. “And you just, you would have let him! What in hell were you thinking?”

Dee was the one to sigh this time. “The entire operation was, perhaps, a trifle ill-conceived,” he conceded unwillingly.

“You think?” Vesca scoffed, and slumped back into the couch, too tired for this crap, just too tired. “Maybe next time you decide to bleed all over my apartment, you can think about how ‘ill-conceived’ something might be before I have to donate a couple of pints.”

Dee stood abruptly, removed the mug from Vesca’s hand, and set it carelessly behind him on the coffee table. He stood before Vesca with lowered brows and pursed lips, somehow managing to look angry and awkward and beautiful at the same time. “I am sorry that I worried you, Mr Agent,” he said stiffly. “And I am sorry that I frightened my son.”

“Well, good,” Vesca began, anger beginning to fade at the concession, but only barely. The moment he spoke, though, Dee’s hand snaked forward and pressed against his mouth, his frown darkening, his eyes narrowing.

“But I am not sorry that I restored D,” he finished, voice perfectly, carefully flat. “And though I regret the harm it brought, I am not sorry to receive that gift from you.”

“Gift?” Vesca tried to ask, Dee’s hand rendering the sound unintelligible, but the Chinese man appeared to understand the question regardless of its level of coherence.

“Blood is a precious thing, Vesca Howell,” he said, bending to look Vesca in the eye, braided hair falling forward over his shoulder, still damp from an earlier shower, The strands clung together even as the braid itself began to unravel with the movement. “Precious, and powerful. Especially when given freely.” His smile was feral, but Vesca couldn’t look away from his eyes, couldn’t speak, not even when Dee’s hand slipped away from his mouth, slipped sideways to curve gently along his neck. “Blood carries truth and memory better than any heart ever could. And to my kind, Vesca...” His voice was low, now, murmured against Vesca’s earlobe, into his flesh, for all that Dee was still hovering in front of him. They were barely even touching, except for that hand on his neck. “...it is the first thing that we know, and the last. And so for us, blood is read so very, very easily.”

Vesca had about three seconds to wonder what it was that Dee had ‘read’ in his blood, and then Dee was kissing him again, firmer than he had done in the kitchen, days ago, and when Vesca opened his mouth – and he’d never be sure if that was surprise or something else – deeper, harder, more insistently. Vesca’s hand rose, to pull closer or push away he’d never guess, he wasn’t sure he could honestly do anything, think anything, when Dee was kissing him like this. When it brushed Dee’s ribs, the Chinese man was closer than he had any right to be, one knee between Vesca’s thighs on the edge of the couch, bracing himself, and Vesca made a soft sound in the back of his throat as he felt Dee’s weight shift onto that knee, felt the other leg slide forward until Dee was straddling one of his thighs, he thought, with one hand still steering Vesca’s jaw, slipping back to the nape of his neck, and the other resting on Vesca’s stomach, just below his ribs. Vesca was not at all sure what he had meant by that sound. When Dee retreated slightly, breath ghosting over Vesca’s lips, he didn’t seem the least bit confused, which Vesca thought, dazedly, was a little unfair, given that he was clearly insane.

“What,” he said. “Fuck. Fuck was that.” He hadn’t even managed to make it into a question. His hand was fisted in Dee’s shirt, just above his hip. And Dee was giving him a smirk again, mischief and dusk in his eyes, and lord, he was really, really too close to be making expressions like that.

“That was the idea, Mr Agent,” he said, coy and clearly in perfect control, and Vesca just stared at him, helpless, altogether too aware of Dee’s knee between his thighs, the gloss of saliva on Dee’s lips, the ghost of a triumphant flush dusting his cheekbones. But Dee took pity on him, easing back slightly, running his nails over the top of Vesca’s skull rather than the nape of his neck.

“A kiss, Vesca Howell,” he said, still teasing, this time in his explaining-to-stupid-people voice. “Generally an accepted method of displaying a favourable response to a declaration of love. Unless you would prefer for me to club you over the head, drag you away by the hair...?” A light scrape of the nails just behind Vesca’s hairline, and an amused huff of breath at the involuntary shudder it produced. “There is not really enough of it, but I could make an attempt.”

Vesca could feel himself turning a dull red. He didn’t quite sputter when he spoke, but it was a close thing. “What? I—” Scowling as his red face grew even redder. “When did I say anything like that?”

Dee’s teasing smile gentled, just a little, and the hand in his hair scrunched again, just once, just slowly. Vesca appreciated slowly, at this point. “Blood carries truth, Vesca.” The words were simple, and for once Dee did not sound frustrated at being forced to repeat himself. He sounded calm. Serene, even. Unshakeable. “Having shared such a thing with me, words are... unnecessary.” The hand in his hair dropped to the back of his neck again, and Vesca shivered for about half a second before he reached up and grabbed it, desperate to just have a minute to think, to think, to try to work out what he was meant to be thinking about, exactly, because the hell of it was, Dee wasn’t exactly wrong.

It was just that he wasn’t exactly right, either, as far as Vesca knew.

“You... are you seriously trying to tell me my blood told you I’m—” He wasn’t even sure that he could say it, though it had occurred to him a few times over the years. Usually at three in the morning, the day before he crashed out cold for fourteen hours, having barely slept for a month. His hand on Dee’s wrist tightened. “That’s what you meant by reading?”

Dee smiled.

Vesca’s fingers went numb, and his hand hung limply fron the end of his arm. He stared at it for about half a second, then decided he probably had bigger things to be worrying about, given the way that Dee’s smile was still growing, and full of mischief once again.

“Will you tell me I am wrong?” he inquired simply, leaning forward so that he could look directly into Vesca’s face, resting his forearms on Vesca’s chest so that he could do so comfortably. Dee’s smile was dazzling enough at a distance with nothing behind it; this soft, warm smile, so close, and accompanied by peppermint breath and—

“I think your tastebuds need glasses,” Vesca said, possibly nonsensically. “And you smell like floor cleaner.”

“You say the most charming things, Mr Agent,” said Dee, apparently unfazed by the comment. “I shall forgive you only because you are in love with me and I clearly turn your sharp, scientific mind into butter.” He did not seem inclined to move any time soon, and that was a problem, because his proximity really was doing strange things to Vesca’s brain. This was like college all over again. One day maybe he’d reflect fondly on his college days, but he’d probably have to be eighty-five and about to be shot in the head.

“And you’re crazy,” he added, feeling heat in his face again as Dee just kept on looking at him, aware that the statement might not be convincing as far as demonstrating the non-buttery qualities of his mind went. The twitch at the corner of Dee’s mouth, and the quirk of his eyebrow, only confirmed this.

“Oh?” Dee shifted slightly, resting on only one arm while he tucked hair behind one ear, tugging his long pale fingers through its darkness slowly, wriggling them slowly to work out imaginary tangles. Vesca’s eyes flickered to Dee’s fingers, and it wasn’t until he heard Dee’s voice in his ear that he realised this had probably been a distraction tactic. “And if I were to tell you, Vesca Howell,” he murmured, low and throaty and directly to Vesca’s cock, “that you have fascinated me for almost as long as I have fascinated you...?” His long nails scratched lightly at the fabric of Vesca’s shirt.

Vesca swallowed. Registered briefly that this all seemed incredibly unfair. “That’s pretty hard to believe,” he said carefully, and felt more than saw Dee’s grin against the side of his neck.

“Why, Mr Agent,” he murmured. “I believe I shall simply have to demonstrate.”

*

Vesca had initially opened his mouth to demand what that was supposed to mean, but when Dee kissed his neck, open-mouthed, tongue rolling over the flesh, all that had emerged was soundless air, and as Dee continued to mouth his way down Vesca’s throat toward his collarbone, he found his own fingers twitching, edging along Dee’s own thigh, beginning to curve around his back, to pull him closer. He still smelled of peppermint, and floor cleaner, though the vague, sweet scent of lucern he remembered from college seemed to have faded over the years. He closed his eyes as Dee’s tongue laved over his adam’s apple, kept them closed when Dee pecked briefly at his chin, and then kissed his mouth again.

Hesitantly.

Which was new for Dee.

Though it was maybe a little contrary of Vesca to start asking what was wrong, why Dee was holding off, when he’d spent the last five minutes doing the exact same thing. The last five days, even, or the last five years, or, hell, who knew when it had really started? It might have been that first day. Standing in a lab, totally bewildered, and watching Dee babytalk an insect with the ability to wipe out all of North America. A few days later, feeling strangely indignant when the rest of the world seemed to suddenly be noticing the beautiful new tutor in their midst as well, when he was beginning to feel faint strains of I saw him first, before he even knew Count D’s name--

He kissed back. Fingers completing their journey toward Dee’s hips, sliding around and upward, pulling inexorably forward, thumbs rubbing slow circles in the wake of heavy palms. Dee hummed approval, hands easing down Vesca’s chest, first pressing the fabric smooth, then returning to Vesca’s collar to work at his buttons. For a moment, Vesca’s hands faltered against Dee’s back. There was a kid down the hall, after all, although he could be sleeping for all Vesca knew – he himself had slept for a sizeable portion of the afternoon – and even though he was becoming more and more comfortable with the idea of... Dee... as they went along, Vesca Howell had standards, and those standards included not making incriminating noises when a child was in the general vicinity.

The thought of Dee making incriminating noises was enough to tighten his hands on the smaller man’s spine, which was enough to prompt a real incriminating noise from the man in question, which really only exascerbated the whole problem, but it was hard to concentrate on that when Dee was apparently intent on divesting him of his shirt without ever moving his mouth away from Vesca’s skin.

He tried anyway. “Really shouldn’t be nngh,” he managed, as Dee’s teeth grazed a nipple. “There’s a—Jesus, Dee— kid down the hall.”

For a moment, when Dee’s mouth lifted away from his ribs, he shifted forward, chasing the heat and the wet and the teeth that were sharper than he had somehow expected them to be. Chased it and forced himself to still, because this wasn’t what it was about, not really, and there was a kid down the hall, and how the hell was D going to feel, lying there in the dark and listening to his father making noises—

Dee straightened, putting his face on a level with Vesca’s. He didn’t look disappointed. He didn’t even look discouraged. He looked smug. His violet eyes had darkened, deepened, and Vesca felt something in his stomach twist as he watched Dee’s lips curve into a smirk, felt Dee’s nails on his ribs where a hot tongue had been moments earlier, felt Dee’s hips shift closer when he opened his mouth to speak.

“The baby... doesn’t... care,” Dee said, each word punctuated with a calculated roll of his hips, a bite to Vesca’s collarbone, a simple, breathy exhalation beside Vesca’s ear that should not, could not have made his hands clench, his pulse race, as much as it did, and when Vesca’s only response was a shuddering gasp, licking down his torso as he peeled the buttons away, along ribs, along hips. Vesca only realised how close, how hard he had been holding Dee’s hips when they started to move away from him, Dee working his slow, inexorable way downward, his body slipping, for the first time, between Vesca’s legs, every brush of a hand, of a strand of long dark hair, nudging them wider. Vesca’s hands fluttered over Dee’s back, his shoulders, unable to do much more than watch as Dee licked a hot, wet line across his belly, just below his navel, just above the first faint traces of dark golden hair, and Vesca’s breath caught at the expression of intent on Dee’s face. His eyes didn’t even flash upward, not even teasingly. He was focused completely on Vesca’s body, on baring it slowly to his ministrations. Something about that knowledge made it even harder for Vesca to breathe right.

Dee paused there for a moment, opening Vesca’s pants with nimble fingers, giving hot, open-mouthed kisses of encouragement to the sensitive skin just above Vesca’s pubic hair whenever the agent’s twitching was particularly helpful in baring more flesh for Dee’s perusal. Vesca lifted his hips obediently as Dee slid his hands forward, underneath Vesca’s thighs, and with a few determined tugs – and something that sounded suspiciously like a whimper, when Dee withdrew for a moment – Vesca’s pants were around his ankles, and Dee was pressing his thighs wider again, pale fingers splayed, just forceful enough that Vesca could feel the slightest prick of long nails as Dee’s hands slid up his legs, over his hips, and firmed there, thumbs digging into the hollows just below Vesca’s hips.

He might have writhed as Dee moved closer, might have twitched with every cool, feathery touch of Dee’s trailing hair, but Dee’s hands held him completely immobilised. All he could do, as Dee pressed his mouth to Vesca’s cock through his underwear, mouthing and sucking along its length through the fabric, was gasp and try to move, try to fight the pressure exerted on his hips by Dee’s deceptively delicate-looking hands, and fist his own hands in Dee’s hair, unable to move, unable to speak except in half-words and pleading, as Dee’s mouth moved slowly, methodically over him. Too slow. Too slow, and he pulled, tried to ask, and felt Dee stilling, moving slower still, and couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear it, he couldn’t stop, not now, not—“Dee,” he pleaded, his first full word, and Dee pulled away completely, leaving him gasping, flushed, furious, and determined to swear just as badly as he could as soon as he got some goddamn lung power behind his voice again.

Dee slid up his body again, lazy, eyes half-lidded and so dark now that they nearly matched his hair. He licked his lips slowly, deliberately, and laid his hands on Vesca’s chest, just as slowly, and with just as much purpose.

“Lie down, Vesca Howell,” he suggested, applying gentle pressure with both hands, leaning forward to kiss Vesca again, still too lazily for Vesca’s tastes, but deep and sweet and he pulled Dee as close as he possibly could, arms crushing the smaller man to his chest even as he obeyed Dee’s command. He swivelled as best he could on the too-small couch, right leg bent and braced against the back of the couch, foot braced against the arm rest. Vesca’s hands roved from the relatively safe territory of Dee’s shoulders, the small of his back, to untucking his shirt, trying to push Dee’s pants down his hips without remembering that he needed to unbutton them first, and feeling Dee’s laughter reverbrate through both their chests before the Chinese man moved back again. Vesca could not quite stifle his groan when Dee ran both hands down his chest, eyes on Vesca’s all the while, and slid the carefully purchased slacks down over his hips, one pale, agonising inch at a time. He wasn’t wearing the underwear they had purchased. Vesca wondered if he did that all the time, or if he had planned this, if he had known all afternoon what he would do to get Vesca here, if he had taken the time to plan.

“Tease,” he accused, surprised with the huskiness of his own voice, and Dee tilted his head coyly as he shrugged out of his shirt, first one smooth, pale shoulder, and then the other, twisting his body so carefully that Vesca knew they both knew this was a show, now, at least for the time being.

“Don’t say that now,” he said, all silk and subtle cruelty, letting the shirt drop to the floor, one hand grazing too low on his own stomach and making Vesca’s eyes drop to watch it, making him swallow carefully before he looked at Dee’s face again. “I might decide to be.” Vesca had half a moment to bite his own tongue before Dee made a lie of his teasing by gliding back toward the couch – and if that shouldn’t work in pants, then it definitely shouldn’t work naked, but Jesus, Dee might be able to make anything work naked; everything was so long and pale and smooth, fingers, arms, legs, neck, and Vesca couldn’t help but feel slightly smudged, slightly damaged, in the face of Dee’s perfection.

Dee raised one foot, slowly, deliberately, and let his toes rest on Vesca’s closest hip. He slid his foot across Vesca’s body, lowering himself with such control that the full length of his calf, the full weight of his thigh, passed right across Vesca’s abdomen before Dee settled there, heavy and warm and only just too far north, only just too high to—

He shifted backward, did not quite settle again. Vesca made a small, indistinct sound, hands coming up to touch Dee’s knees, run as far as they could go along Dee’s thighs, smooth and hairless and so white under even his lab-pale hands. Dee smiled at him, half seduction and half simple fondness, smoothing his own hands first over Vesca’s, then down the agent’s forearms, holding Vesca’s face between his palms and leaning forward just to kiss him, slow and deep, strangely calming in contrast to the firm heat pressed into Vesca’s stomach, and the hint of weight hovering over his cock. Vesca closed his eyes, enjoying the feel of Dee’s skin under his hands, Dee’s hands over his skin. He hummed into Dee’s mouth, content for the moment with the simpler touches, but not discouraging it when Dee’s teeth grazed his lower lip and he moved away from Vesca’s mouth again, kissing and nibbling along Vesca’s jaw, running his tongue along the shell of Vesca’s ear.

Feeling that this had all been pretty one-sided so far, Vesca twisted his head enough that he could get at Dee's neck, Dee's shoulder, and was honestly surprised when Dee's breath hitched against his ear at the first touch of Vesca's tongue to his skin. Vesca opened his mouth wider against Dee's neck, first pressing as much of his tongue to the smooth skin as possible, then sucking, just lightly, no teeth. At least until Dee moaned, quiet and needful, against the side of his face, all his small, careful movements grinding to a halt as he paused to concentrate on the sensation. Vesca smoothed his hands down Dee's back, firm and, he hoped, warm, though the apartment had been getting chilly and the open glass door was probably no help; he sucked harder, pressed Dee's body towards him as firmly as he could, and Dee made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a moan, his hand tightening on Vesca's shoulder, before his mouth opened on Vesca's once again, harder, more insistent. Vesca's hands slid all the way up Dee's spine and down again, keeping up that pressure, making sure that Dee was pressed as tightly to his body as possible.

"Glad you didn't give me to those harpies?" Vesca found himself asking the juncture between Dee's jaw and neck, tongue darting out to flicker over the amethyst stud in Dee's ear, and then sucking the entire lobe into his mouth. Dee moaned again, said something Vesca didn't quite catch - possibly in Chinese - and did something with his hips that made Vesca bite down on the soft flesh before he remembered himself, but that only seemed to make Dee writhe even harder.

“Petrels,” he gasped. “I was prepared, but you, ah,” as Vesca bit his neck again. "I had thought, I had thought there must be, nnh, a sacrifice, but you-- you--" And then Dee's hand slithered from Vesca's shoulder to his hair, tugging, pulling Vesca back so that they could see each other, and Dee's pale skin was flushed and gorgeous and there was hair in Vesca's mouth and Dee was gazing at him with such feral intensity, eyes dark with desire. His hand tightened in Vesca's hair and even that small pain felt good. An anchor. As soon as he thought it, he shuddered, and Dee's expression changed subtly. No longer out of his mind, no longer clouded, but still driven, and - to Vesca's slight trepidation - smiling again.

He sat back slowly, recentering his weight around Vesca's hips, further down than he had been but still not far enough, and as Vesca's hands slid back along Dee's thighs, the smaller man's expression became calculating. He swivelled his hips slowly, and Vesca's hands dug into Dee's pale, spare flesh as he gasped, prompting another small sound from the man hovering above him. Dee's eyes gleamed. "I had wondered," he said, his voice a low purr, leaning forward to dig his nails into Vesca's ribs, lightly, then his stomach, and then slipping over Vesca's sides to apply their small, sharp pressures to what back he could reach. Vesca arched obligingly. Dee's smile only grew.

He raised himself onto his knees, brought both hands with their nails up over Vesca's sides again, down over his hips, and where that sensation stopped, Dee's hands wrapped around his cock and Vesca made a sound half of want, half of startlement. Dee lowered himself with exquisite control, guiding Vesca with one hand, eyes bright and distant, expression hungry, and Vesca thought he had never seen anyone so beautiful, and he really, really did not want this to hurt anyone involved, and so he opened his mouth and started to say don’t you want any lube except all that came out was, “Don’t you wa-nngh, god, Dee, what—” because Dee was already pressing downward, not nearly as slow or as careful as Vesca had expected him to, and he was tight, true, but he was wet and smooth and even as Vesca’s mind rebelled, wondered what the hell was going on there, because that wasn’t how it worked, his hips jerked without his conscious control, and Dee looked for a moment as though he had been given something he had wanted for as long as he could remember, and that made Vesca’s hips jerk again, wrenching sounds from both of them, dropping Dee’s full weight on top of him as the smaller man leaned forward slightly to rest his palms on Vesca’s chest and look into his face.

“I had wondered,” he repeated, as though it was something that needed to be said, as though there were more important things to be doing right now than moving. “You were always so easily led, it had occurred to me, I had wondered,” and he raised himself slowly, breath fluttering for a moment in the middle of the sentence, and brought his body down again with considerably less control. “And when I allowed myself,” he began again, voice lower, more intimate even than the slowly-fracturing movements of his hips, “I wondered if it would be like this. I wondered if you would fight me, if you would surrender…” Vesca’s head dropped back, his hands closing on Dee’s hips, helping, guiding when he remembered, when he could think, but he couldn’t think, he could never think, not with that voice, not with those words—“...the sounds you would make if I—”

“Nnngahhhn—”

His eyes were closed and Dee was everywhere, his hands, his voice, his body, just as breathless as Vesca was, just as desperate as Vesca was, but holding it together, holding it all together— “Imagination is such a poor - ah - tool—”

“Jesus, Dee, Dee, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus—”

“—Vesca Howell—”

His back bowed, hands clenched, toes curled, pleasure tightening every muscle as he came, and even when he opened his eyes again he couldn’t tell, didn’t notice, because his vision was white and for a long moment he couldn’t see anything at all. His breath was still burning in and out of his lungs when he became aware again of Dee’s weight pressed to his stomach, breathing in the same gulping, gasping lungfuls that Vesca was, a flood of sticky warmth between them. He raised a hand to Dee’s hair, just tightened his fingers in it, too exhausted for the moment to speak, and Dee pressed back against his hand with a lazy sound of pleasure.

“Imagination is a very poor tool,” he repeated, heavy and sated and clearly about forty seconds away from sleep, which – open door and sticky mess aside – sounded like a great idea. He shifted slightly, feeling every twist of muscle in his still-sensitised penis, and Dee, with what seemed like gargantuan effort (and probably was) lifted himself slowly, shuddering, until Vesca was no longer inside him. Then he collapsed along Vesca’s side again, small and warm and lazily affectionate, one hand on Vesca’s stomach, the other crushed up near Dee’s face. He managed to make it look incredibly comfortable. Forget that what he’d just said had been... Vesca shifted again, held Dee slightly closer.

“Yeah,” he agreed quietly. Dee’s eyes opened briefly to stare at him, to show that he understood the admission, and his smile was warm when Vesca did not look away. He had confessed to a thousand things right there, and he’d said all he needed to say about them – nothing could compare to the real Dee, cuddled up next to him on the couch. Nothing.

Besides, he had the sneaking suspicion that there’d be trouble if Dee ever realised that in Vesca’s imagination, Vesca had always been on top.


	12. Part 11

Dee woke long before Vesca did, chilled just enough to appreciate Vesca's steady warmth, to small feet on carpet and his son's soft, hesitant voice. "Father...?" Dee raised his hand, waving his son closer, even as he noted with distaste the mess that he and the agent had made. Perhaps it future it would behoove them to clean themselves before they fell asleep.

D's face appeared over Vesca's chest, dubious about the sight, and Dee smiled at him gently, reassuringly. His beautiful son. Would he have been born more whole if he had been the product of this union, and not an empty duty in the back of Dee's mind? He did not know. He could not change it now. "What is it, my son?"

D looked aside, not embarrassed, simply ashamed to be intruding. "I am sorry, Father. I am... hungry."

Just the word made Dee notice the hollow ache in his own stomach. He sat up carefully, easing his skin back from Vesca's gently where they were fused by dried fluid, and levered himself carefully over the agent's body and onto the floor again. He offered a clean hand to his son. "As am I," he said decisively. "Give me but a moment to freshen myself, my son, and I will make you a breakfast such as you have not had for some weeks." His body hurt when he moved, just enough to ensure that he moved delicately, but it was a good hurt, satisfing in its own way. "Come. Mr Agent has not a bath, like the pet shop, but a shower, which is just as refreshing." He swung his child's hand playfully between them, and slowed the motion when his son's serious face did not dissipate with the game. He paused them at the door to Vesca's room, crouched until he was on a level with his child.

"Is something wrong, my son?" It was an honest question, and the second time he had asked it. If he could help, he would, but nothing would have brought this child to adulthood without heartache. Dee hoped that this way was better for them both. For them all.

D shrugged a little, still looking aside, and Dee smoothed his hair gently.

"You know that you can speak anything to me," he said. "I will not fault you."

D continued to look troubled, and Dee stroked his cheek lightly with his thumb, leaned forward to press a kiss to his son's forehead. "Speak when you wish to, my son," he said softly. "I will always hear. For now, I will get you your breakfast."

He washed himself briskly and was in the process of buttoning his shirt when D's small voice said, "Is this our mating season, Father?" Dee's hands stilled. He forced them to move again.

"Our kind does not have mating season, my son. We are beyond that, being able to support ourselves in any season."

"Oh." A few moments of silence. "And... humans do not have mating seasons, either?"

Dee knelt before his son on carpet just outside the bathroom, expression calm and serious. "No, my son. They do not. I thought you had agreed that there was no harm in befriending a human, my son?" It was a gentle prompt. Dee did not expect his son to agree with him so easily, not after time with his grandfather, undoubtedly having been regaled with tales of Dee's treachery in resorting to human methods for anything at all. Even this child's life. How else could he have saved this child? How else had his father saved him, if, indeed, Dee had needed to be saved...?

D nodded hastily, quick to reassure his father. "I do. I like Mr Vesca." Dee's heart clenched, and he held out his arms for his son, who came to him slowly, it was true, but more quickly than he had the day Dee had returned to the shop to tell his father the news, to say that he knew how to save the child, how to fix him. "But, Father... will you invite a human into the shop?"

And there, Dee bowed his head to rest atop his son's, stroking his hair gently. "I do not know whether we will be able to return to the shop, my child," he admitted softly. "If we could... I would invite him. I am not certain that he could accept such an invitation, but I have seen his heart, my son. We both protect what is important to us, and I can see no fault in that. It is what your grandfather and I disagreed upon most strongly of all, but it is all I can do. I cannot be the way he was, my child. I cannot let you live or die as nature wills it. And I cannot let him, either."

D was quiet for a long time. Long enough that Dee said, quietly, desperately, "Did you never wish to save something, my son, that your grandfather told you not to save?"

More silence. And then a nod, and D's small arms reached up to close around his father's neck, a firm embrace, and a comfortable one. Dee tightened his own hold and kissed the top of his son's head again, stood and took his son with him.

"These are such difficult questions for you, my little one," he mused softly as he went. "I wish you had been given more time in which to consider them." The hall cupboard squeaked abominably when he opened it, but there were blankets there, and he tucked one safely under his arm, and spread it over Vesca as best he could with his son on one hip. Then he slipped back toward the kitchen, and sat D on the counter with a smile.

"Now," he said softly. "How would you feel about pancakes?"

*

When Vesca woke up, it was to the smell of pancakes, and bacon, and coffee, and something that smelled like stewed apple, and a small, serious face next to his saying something totally incomprehensible. He jerked upright, a haphazardly applied blanket falling away from his torso - or mostly away, anyway. He grimaced at the remnants of the previous night's activities, and blinked. Glanced at the small child, D, who was cheerfully saying something to him in Chinese, and pointing toward the kitchen. And turned red. He turned at Dee's voice - also speaking Chinese - eyes wide at the ease with which Dee was taking his son waking up his naked lover, and scowled when Dee saw his face and started laughing at him.

"What are you laughing at?" he snapped before he could stop himself, and regretted it immediately as D's bicoloured eyes widened and he took a step back, obviously unaccustomed to such loud displays of temper. Dee's laughter remained.

"You have such an interesting complexion, Mr Agent," the other man sing-songed, and gestured with a spatula Vesca did not remember owning. "Breakfast is nearly done. Would you care to shower beforehand?"

Vesca glanced down at the kid again, and nodded slowly. Dee made a shooing motion with the utensil, and turned back to his kitchen.

"Off you go, then," he said lightly. "And do try to stop looking like a deer in headlights, Vesca," he added over his shoulder, over the noise of the cooktop's fan. "My son has an excellent knowledge of animal bahaviour." His attention was all on the meal, hardly on Vesca at all, and that simultaneously irritated Vesca and made him more relaxed about the whole deal. He said thankyou to D, one of about five words of Mandarin he understood, and ruffled the kid's hair when he at first looked surprised, and then smiled back, blindingly. Easily as pretty as his father, Vesca thought, getting to his feet, careful not to lose the blanket. God knew what they were going to do when the kid grew up. He'd need an armed guard if he was going to go to a real school, that was for sure, or he'd disappear under a pile of slobbering idiots. Just like Dee would've, if not for his right hook. Well, Vesca wasn’t useless in a fight, and together he and Dee could teach the kid to look after himself...

He nearly walked past the kitchen, thinking these thoughts, before he realised that he was thinking them. The moment he realised what exactly he was thinking about, a future, helping raise... Vesca walked across the kitchen instead of down the hall, wrapped his free arm around Dee from behind, and kissed his neck, just under his ear, before resting his head on top of Dee’s head. Dee made a soft sound of surprised contentment, and leaned his weight into Vesca’s chest happily enough. “Breakfast first, I assume?” he said, and Vesca hmmm’d in response. He was definitely hungry, and the food smells were doing nothing to change that.

“Might be a good idea, yeah,” he agreed.

“You are not feeling groggy this morning, Mr Agent?” Dee asked, and his voice held just a touch more concern. “No ill-effects?”

Vesca considered. Shrugged. “Nothing hurts more than it should,” he said, untroubled by the vague twinges in his muscles – they were more from the couch than anything, he suspected, but the thought made him frown. “Why? Are you sore?” He knew they should have used something. But Dee shook his head.

“No more than I should.” He repeated Vesca’s words, adding a lascivious smirk, and throwing his weight back ever so slightly for a second. Then he flipped a pancake deftly, and tilted his head, considering. “Will you move the rest to the coffee table?” he asked. “These will all be finished shortly.”

Vesca rubbed Dee's stomach for a few more seconds, moved back to wrap his blanket a little more securely, and turned to look at the small variety of toppings that Dee had already prepared and spread over the counter. He swiftly came to the realisation that the blanket was not going to work without the assistance of his left hand, and that there was too much stuff for him to carry all at once. (Also that Dee had gone a little crazy this morning, or sex was a reason for major celebration in China. Or wherever Dee actually came from.) He grabbed a plate of cut and arranged fruit, and had gone about two steps before little D was in front of him, holding up his hands to help. Vesca paused.

"You sure?" he asked. "It's pretty heavy." He didn't want the kid to drop anything. More because of shards of crockery and their all having bare feet than because he was particularly attached to his plates. But D held out his arms expectantly, and Vesca handed him the plate gingerly. "All right, then. Be careful."

He grabbed the glasses Dee had filled with... yep, stewed apple, and honey, and some kind of berry matter, in absence of small bowls, and pinched the glasses carefully together as he carried them toward the coffee table. D took the sugar pot, and Vesca snagged his mug of coffee and Dee's mug of tea just as Dee turned around and pronounced breakfast ready, descending on the table with a plate stacked high with pancakes.

Dee served his son first, then Vesca, and then himself. To Vesca’s surprise, the bacon and the eggs seemed to be entirely for his benefit – and the fruit seemed to be entirely for father and son. Which didn’t bother Vesca at all, aside from the knowledge that a breakfast this big on a regular basis would probably leave him struggling on the obstacle course, except that he’d been pretty sure that D would need to eat meat, raw meat, like his father had been eating of late.

“You don’t need the meat any more?” he asked, just before he took a mouthful of coffee, and Dee shook his head, violet eyes back to their more usual expression of teasing amusement.

“That was simply to support my son as best as possible,” he said. “Now that he is older, we can return to our usual diet.” Sugar, sugar, and more sugar, Vesca surmised, watching Dee plaster his son’s pancake liberally with the stewed apples, then with the honey. When the kid looked up, asked a quick question, Dee replied in a gentler tone, but with no less amusement, and D blinked a few times before he returned to his meal. “What was that about?”

“I was simply telling him what you had said,” Dee replied, spooning apple over his own pancakes now. He tilted the glass toward Vesca, who shook his head. Maple syrup might’ve been nice, but he was happy with bacon and eggs to go with his pancakes, without it.

“I’ve really gotta learn Chinese, huh,” he said, more to himself than to Dee, but the other man snorted at his words.

“I would rather teach my son to speak English,” he said, pointedly, and Vesca scowled.

“Just because I made a joke about how much Chinese I spoke, once, doesn’t mean I’m totally incapable, Dee,” he muttered, and Dee’s expression gentled.

“Perhaps you can learn together, then,” he said, and that was the last thing said about it for the rest of the meal. When their plates were empty, Vesca offered to take care of the dishes, which Dee thought laughable given his current attire, so he wound up heading down the hallway - still wrapped in the blanket - looking to shower and maybe head to a laundromat later in the day, since between them they were going through enough for a load every three or four days. Halfway between his closet and the bathroom, Vesca noticed that his pager - while turned to silent - was still blinking frantically at him from the bedside table.

He swore softly under his breath and sat down on the bed, pulling the bedside phone closer and dialling the number quickly. Didn't look like a Bureau number, but you never knew. He waited, fingers drumming an impatient beat against his knee, and was relieved when a familiar voice picked up and said, "Andrews residence."

"Andy," Vesca said, realising too late how scratchy his voice was. "You called?"

"Oh, hey Howell. Yeah, listen, it's all going to be up and running by three, but the director said not to bother, so we're back tomorrow." His voice was muffled, as though he was holding the phone against his face with one shoulder, mashing the mouthpiece into his face at the same time. Vesca heard a chuckle. "So you can catch up on paperwork, since I know you're not going to take it easy."

Vesca thought of the man in his kitchen, and knew a moment of awkwardness. Forced a laugh. "You think my visitors are gonna let me get away with working overtime, you've got another thing coming," he said, and Andy snorted.

"Knew I liked the sound of him," he said approvingly. "You'll have to introduce us properly on Friday."

Vesca felt the bed sink behind him, glanced around in time for Dee's face to be right there when the Chinese man leaned in to rest his chin on Vesca's shoulder. He jerked away, simultaneously offending Dee and forgetting to answer the question, which he realised respectively when Dee got quiet and still behind him, and when Andrews said, “Hello? Howell?”

“What? Yeah, yeah,” he agreed, trying to communicate apology-work-call to Dee with his eyebrows. “You talked to him about it, and he seems to be looking forward to it. Can’t think why.”

“Bite me, Howell,” Andrews laughed. “All right, see you tomorrow, then.”

“Right. Take care.” He hung up, and twisted to face Dee, who did not appear to have accepted his attempts at interpretive apology. “Sorry. Didn’t hear you coming.”

Dee pouted. “And here I came all the way in here to find out if you had drowned in the bathroom, or were merely unable to decide on a particular ridiculous tie,” he said, and Vesca recognised the tone as grave, masked with wit. His lips flattened out.

“Why’d you think something like that?” he asked, prepared to be told he was being ridiculous, and instead receiving something like a cautious expression from the other man.

“It is nothing,” Dee started to say, and stopped when Vesca scowled at him. “...I thought perhaps you had begun to have second thoughts, and were taking advantage of your privacy.” He wasn’t looking at Vesca when he spoke, and his hair had fallen forward over his shoulders, partially hiding his face from view. He didn’t seem inclined to tuck it back again, so Vesca did it for him, lifting the hair all the way back over Dee’s shoulder and letting his hand settle on the back of Dee’s neck. He leaned forward and kissed Dee gently, firmly, not letting him go anywhere until he was sure that his point had been made. He felt the tension drain from Dee’s neck and shoulders, as he did so, and grinned as he pulled back, delivering a briefer kiss to Dee’s forehead before he turned.

“All right, I really am going to get that shower now.” He stood, and got about three steps before he realised he'd left his shirt and slacks on the bed, next to the phone, and before Dee reached out lazily and tugged hard on the blanket he was wearing. Not having been expecting this, the blanket followed Dee's direction instead of remaining in Vesca’s loosely clenched hand, and fell to the floor.

Dee tilted his head, eyes travelling Vesca’s entire body before moving unhurriedly back to his face. He smirked, and held out Vesca’s missing clothing. “If you’re sure you’re going to need it,” he said, and Vesca licked his lips.

“Where’s D?” he asked. The only sensible question. Dee twisted his hair around his finger, ostensibly deep in thought.

“He is out on the balcony, talking to your mint and our avian friends,” he said, perfectly calm. Vesca thought of a six-year-old on the balcony of a fifth-floor apartment, unsupervised except for birds and a pot plant, and just about felt his knees give out. He was halfway toward his bedroom door again when Dee caught him by both elbows, slowing him with a quiet, exasperated Vesca… and a kiss between his shoulderblades. “He is young and damaged, but he is not stupid, Mr Agent.” It was murmured into the skin of his back, Dee’s hands dropping from his elbows to sneak around his hips, one moving over Vesca’s pectorals until it reached his sternum, the other moving lower. Vesca twitched, glared back over his shoulder.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m trying to have a shower, here.”

“You still may,” Dee said magnanimously, fingers wrapping around Vesca and massaging lightly, thumb moving in small circles over his head. Vesca straightened, and backed them further into the dimness of his room, not quite into the bed. There was sitting on someone, and there was sitting on someone. He cleared his throat before he spoke.

“You keep that up, and I’m not going anywhere,” he said, managing to hold his voice steady even as Dee tightened his hand, teasing.

“Oh?” came the reply, breathily against the back of his neck. “You really should, you know. I can still smell you.” The deep inhalation, and the growling purr of an outward breath, was not especially convincing. “Do you require assistance, Vesca Howell?” The hand on his chest moved upward to toy with Vesca’s nipple, and somewhere in the back of his head, Vesca lamented the loss of his dignity, his privacy, and his free will.

In the very, very back of his head.

*

Approximately two minutes later, Vesca was being pressed against his bathroom wall, held off the ground only by Dee’s hands under his ass, his knee between Vesca’s thighs, and an admittedly tenuous grip on both towel-rack and sink. It was not exactly what he had been thinking when he had allowed Dee to turn him around and back him steadily into the bathroom, but it was hard to complain when he could hardly breathe for the force of the kisses that Dee was pressing into him.

“I could smell you,” Dee was saying, distractedly, as Vesca fumbled with the button on the smaller man’s pants – Dee’s hands were otherwise occupied, and there were going to be some questions about that, later, about wrists about as thick as Vesca’s two fingers being somehow capable of holding up a taller man with no apparent effort. “—with my breakfast. Tell me that isn’t uncouth, Mr Agent, if you will.” Vesca made no attempt to respond, having finally made some progress with Dee’s pants. He didn’t dare let go of the sink to pull Dee closer, but he did dare lift his legs, marvelling when Dee simply adjusted to the extra weight without any sign of strain, when his grip did not waver even when Vesca wrapped his legs awkwardly around the smaller body and crushed them both together, though he did bite down on Vesca’s neck to stifle a moan.

Vesca felt Dee's left hand move at the same time his teeth released the tender flesh at Vesca's neck, and tightened his grip on the edge of the sink reflexively, but Dee's arm slid behind his back, crushing them even closer together, lifting Vesca slightly higher, mouth moving down Vesca's chest, still unbothered by the taller, broader man's weight, and Vesca thought, he could break me with one hand tied behind his back. Dee's mouth fastened onto his right nipple, first grazing it with his teeth, then sucking so hard it very nearly hurt, and the thought was not as terrifying as it probably should have been.

He sucked in his breath with a hiss, squeezed with his legs, and felt Dee's other hand slip out from under him as well, shifting Vesca's weight completely to the front of Dee's slender body. He didn't even feel it raking up the side of his body, just found Dee's fingers at his lips, pressing at his lower lip gently, seeking entrance. Vesca heard his heart in his ears, felt his mouth open almost without conscious thought, felt Dee's fingers part, slipping under and around his tongue, gathering moisture. His nails tickled when they moved so lightly; Vesca closed his lips over Dee's fingers and sucked on them gently, pulling them deeper into his mouth and swirling his tongue over them carefully. Dee's eyes fluttered, and he looked up into Vesca's face, eyes dark and predatory once again, as he slipped a third finger into Vesca's mouth.

"I would not want to hurt you, Vesca Howell."

The promise in his voice curled heat through Vesca’s body. He lapped at the new finger slowly, aware of their bulk in his mouth, now, though he had always thought Dee had tiny, slender hands. They did not feel slender on his tongue, or pressed into his hip; he would never see Dee as small or delicate again. He would only remember the strength in those deceptively thin arms, how those hands felt as they curled around him, pressed into him-- his eyes squeezed shut as Dee's fingers pulled slowly out of his mouth, as he panted around their departing tips.

Dee's mouth replaced them, gentle, and calming. "Relax, Mr Agent," he murmured, nibbled on Vesca's lip. "Just relax." The tip of one finger - not the nail, just the pad of the fingertip - touched his entrance, warm and not nearly moist enough, Vesca was suddenly sure, chill anxiety lancing through him. Dee bit his lip to make him open his eyes, and seeing Dee's so warm, so close, was enough to make him shiver reflexively. "I said 'relax', Vesca Howell. Don't you trust me?" The pad of his finger circled the tiny, puckered opening, and Vesca swallowed hard. Nodded, jerkily, trusting Dee - to a point - but not trusting himself to speak.

Dee kissed him again, gently, deeply, and at the same moment, pressed his fingertip, nail and all, into Vesca. The kiss was not enough to distract him from the alien sensation. Vesca opened his mouth wider, lapped at the roof of Dee's mouth with his tongue, and Dee pressed forward to match him, not over-eager, but understanding of Vesca's need for a distraction. As Dee’s tongue pressed deeper, so, too, did his finger, until finally Vesca could feel Dee’s knuckle against his entrance. Dee withdrew slightly, and then pressed slowly inside again, working his finger in gentle circles, loosening the muscle—until, buried up to the knuckle again, Dee’s working finger found a knot of something Vesca hadn’t known he had, and everything tightened again as a twinge of pleasure shivered through his body.

He could feel Dee smiling against his mouth, tongue lapping lightly at Vesca's lips again, now that the worst was over. "There," he said, voice more growl than purr this time, and crooked his finger. Vesca gasped, a heavier sound than was usually attributed to such a word, but a gasp all the same, and Dee withdrew slightly again, bending the second finger to whom that knuckle had belonged and working it slowly in beside its brother, brushing that spot more strongly in reward as Vesca relaxed slowly around them. The third finger soon followed, Dee scissoring his fingers gently, pressing firmly into that sweet spot inside Vesca that made his mind flash blank with pleasure, that had been the cause of his releasing the sink to wrap his arms around Dee's shoulders, unable to reach Dee's neck or shoulders, but wanting him closer, wanting to feel as much of Dee as possible. Dee was right; he could smell him, smell them both, and he gulped in lungful after lungful as his hands palmed uselessly across Dee's shoulders, down his spine.

"Please," he found himself saying. "God, Dee, please."

Dee thrust his fingers into Vesca twice more, prompting shallow gasps for breath, Vesca's head thrown back to thud against the wall, and then withdrew completely. Vesca looked down again, protest stalling in his throat. Dee couldn't tease him now, not now, not when, but Dee was not teasing. His eyes were nearly black, focused hungrily on Vesca's face, on Vesca's eyes, and Vesca felt himself tilt, felt the long-nailed hand beneath his thigh angling him slightly before Dee's eyes closed and he was pushing into Vesca, hard and so much hotter than his fingers had been, Dee's forehead dropping to rest against Vesca's collarbone, his grip on Vesca's body finally faltering a little as his eyes closed, a long, soft moan issuing from his throat.

He stayed there for a few seconds, perfectly still, every muscle in his shoulders that Vesca could feel tensed, as though gathering himself, regaining control. And then his mouth opened against Vesca’s chest, lapping slowly, almost soothingly, and he began to move.

*

The shower helped Vesca’s muscles some, but there was nothing that would help him deal with D’s wide bicoloured eyes (completely unperturbed), or the raucous voices of the crows. It was difficult to walk with any dignity; despite Dee’s best efforts, he hurt. The twinges he had felt earlier this morning were nothing in comparison, and his muscles weren’t the end of it – his skull ached from smashing it into the wall, and there were still marks on his hand from his own teeth when he had attempted to stifle his own shouts of pleasure.

The fact that Dee’s purple eyes continued to follow him as he moved gingerly about the apartment with a mug of coffee helped nothing.

"I have work tomorrow, y'know," he grumbled some time later, Dee's feet in his lap as he perused the newspaper - which he had purchased, since his suggestion that Vesca go had been met with open hostility - and the Chinese man made a sound to indicate that he was listening, but was not unduly concerned.

"You could always stay home," he suggested, the newspaper dropping for just long enough that Vesca could see the wicked gleam in his eyes. Vesca snorted, took a mouthful of his coffee, wondered if it was just his imagination that he could still taste Dee. 

"Yeah, that'd work. As long as you have a cardboard box we can move into when I stop being able to pay the bills."

The paper dropped again, and this time Dee's 'mmm' was slightly more attentive, and rather more wistful. "Yes," he said thoughtfully. "A pity the pet shop is no more, really. How unfortunate, to only be able to have one, and not both." Vesca gave him a sharp look, and Dee smirked, moved his foot just enough to be incredibly unfair. "Perhaps you could help me decide which I would prefer, Mr Agent," he said, coquettishly, and Vesca rolled his eyes, and crossed his legs.

"Hope to hell you're not gonna act like this on Friday," he muttered, and Dee tittered politely.

"Of course not, Mr Agent," he said. "I would not dream of it."

Which was about the time that Vesca realised just how thoroughly he was screwed.

*

"You sure you wouldn't rather spend the night in?" Vesca tried, for the third time. Gordon huffed, paying more attention to his microscope than to the younger scientist hovering next to him, and waved a huge, impatient hand.

"If you're so worried," he said, slowly and painstakingly, "then you might as well not come. Make up some paperwork. Make up a kid's illness. Just get back to work, Howell, you can't have finished up already."

He had. He'd been concentrating so hard on not-concentrating on Dee, or Friday, or anything that might come out of the association of the two, that he'd inadvertantly organised his day so efficiently that he had finished even his paperwork an hour and a half in advance.

Gordon pulled back from the miscroscope long enough to regard him with disbelief, correctly interpreting the long silence. "You did not," he said, half-accusing, half-surprised. "Howell, you are one crazy son of a bitch. What the hell are you hovering around here for, fool? Go home."

“But,” Vesca started, helplessly, and Gordon sighed heavily.

“Howell,” he said, deep and rumbling and terribly sincere. “I have always known that you were a little bit of a nutjob, because no man wears matching ties and socks, least of all on corresponding days of the god damn fortnight. But if you don’t go home and take a shower and drive down to Pete’s and meet us all for a god damn beer, I am going to start to think that you have some kind of serious mental illness, and I am going to go to the director and get you a holiday.” He paused. “Somewhere they do not allow ties. Or socks.”

Vesca sighed. He’d done his best. “Right. See you there.” He was doomed.


	13. Part 12

He came home on Friday to discover that Dee had been shopping for the occasion – D now had real-person clothing as well, and as Vesca watched him tugging at the t-shirt and shorts that Dee had equipped him with, he couldn’t help thinking that it was probably the first time the kid’s arms and legs had been bare when he was dressed. He ruffled the kid’s hair as he passed the couch, greeted him in Chinese, and gave the kid a thumbs-up when D said, carefully, “Hello, Vesca.” The smile that lit the small face at this small success was brilliant.

Dee’s was even more so, when he moved toward the couch, his hair straight and loose about his shoulders. Vesca had been harbouring some misgivings about the persistent plum tinge to his lips and the rosey colour surrounding his eyes, but little D had it, too. He supposed there wasn’t much that Dee could do about his own skin, short of wearing some other kind of makeup, and since he’d never seen a human woman with skin as pale as Dee’s, not even in a laboratory, figured that any attempt to disguise the colour would be kind of pointless. Maybe he could pass it off as a cultural thing, since the kid had it, too.

If anyone even asked. People tended not to question Dee. It was what had set Vesca onto him in the first place – people like that needed to be questioned, usually more than anyone else. Well, he knew why, now. He wondered if his colleagues would pick up on it.

One more thing to be nervous about.

Dee, seeming to sense his tension, lifted his son into his arms, brushing his fingers lightly over D’s hair to settle imaginary stray strands. He moved close enough to press a kiss to the edge of Vesca’s jaw, and let his head rest there long enough that Vesca slipped an arm about his waist and held him there, raising his other hand to beep D on the nose, which seemed so alien to the small child that Vesca had to laugh. “You are gonna grow up so confused, do you know that?” he said, with feeling, and Dee’s head moved from side to side slowly, amused.

“We will manage, I am sure,” he said, nudging Vesca with his free hip, and smirking up through his eyelashes. “But, unless you wish to spend our evening in after all, I believe we should be on our way.”

They drove, D in the back with his father, since the car seat was no longer of any use to them at all. There was no parking in front of Pete’s during the day, but in the evenings – especially on Fridays – the lot was practically empty, because most of the customers went there for the bar’s intended purpose, not for a nice family dinner. Vesca glanced again at Dee’s ‘exotic’ colouring in the rearview as he pulled into a space, and hoped no one would give them any trouble.

Their first steps into the bar were uneventful. A few people stared briefly, but most were drunk enough to assume that long hair and willowy figure meant woman, and still sober enough to realise that woman-with-child meant woman-with-somebody-else. So a few eyes followed them, but Vesca didn’t have to beat anyone off Dee, or deal with any jeering. Not yet, anyway.

He had faith that his colleagues would leave their jeering for outside the bar, though. Which was not exactly reassuring, but at least he probably wouldn't be double-teamed in the middle of a crowded bar (because like hell Dee was going to be any help fending off joking accusations; he'd probably just make them worse).

He was just starting to wonder where in hell the rest of them were when a raised arm at the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he turned to see Andrews toasting him enthusiastically, clearly well into his proverbial cups, and Luke raising a slightly more sedate hand behind him. Vesca couldn't see Gordon, but that didn't mean he wasn't around - his snooker skills were somewhat legendary, and he always got challenged to a game or two when they came in here. He half-turned to catch Dee's attention, jerked his head toward the table, and turned back in time to see Andrews lean low over the booth, as though talking quietly, and Luke make a strange, cautious expression, half-amused and half-quelling.

Vesca tried to ignore the way his stomach dropped.

"Hey, Howell," Andrews said as they got close enough. His grin seemed real enough. "And you must be Dee." He offered a hand to the Chinese man, which wavered only slightly in the air before him. Dee blinked - he was holding D in his right arm - and grasped the hand apologetically with his left.

"You must be Mr Andrews," he said, and Vesca and Luke joined Andrews in saying call him Andy. Dee's lips twitched. "I see you have all been working together for some time," he said, and offered the same hand to Luke. "I spoke to Mr Andrews on the telephone, but I do not believe we have been introduced."

"This's Luke. Resident genius," Vesca added, touch of a grin on his face as Luke gave him a sharp look in response. Dee made a commiseratory sound.

"Then may I offer my condolences, that you are forced to work with Vesca,” he said, perfectly serious, and Andrews cracked up laughing. Luke looked surprised, and sort of tickled, which he never did, because he hated the attention that his intelligence garnered him, and Vesca supposed he had to resign this as a lost battle from the beginning. Well, he’d dealt with Dee when all his friends were against him before, he supposed. He could do it again.

“I’m getting a drink,” he announced, and Andrews immediately raised his beer, wiggling it hopefully. Vesca rolled his eyes, glanced to Luke, who shook his head, and then looked to Dee. “Soda?”

“Please,” Dee responded firmly. “And an extra glass.” He slipped around to the far side of the booth to slide in opposite Luke. Vesca walked away as Andrews leaned forward, intent upon the child now that the introductions were done, and heard the beginning of the typical, and who’s this? Luke wasn’t good with kids – he was too awkward around them – but Andrews loved them, and had three of his own.

He ran into Gordon at the bar, offered to shout this whole round, since if he got them out of the way early, he’d be able to go home sooner, and was glad of the extra pair of hands when he realised how tricky it was going to be to carry an over-full glass of cherry soda along with their usual drink choices back to the booth. Dee accepted his soda with something just this side of glee (Vesca wondered if he could make up some story about chemical imbalance while Dee was distracted by the sugar, and decided against it) and then reached across the table to shake Gordon’s hand, with his right hand this time, as protocol dictated. Gordon shook it amiably enough, but when Dee had returned to his conversation with Luke (about bacteria; at least he was fitting in) he raised his eyebrows at Vesca, and he knew he wasn’t going to get away from this without an explanation of some kind, but he raised one eyebrow as though he had no idea what Gordon might possibly be wondering about. He nudged Andrews.

“So,” he said. “How much did you end up losing?” And Andrews groaned into his beer bottle, thumped it down on the paper disconsolately.

“Please,” he said, “oh, please, can we just not talk about it? I lost fucking everything, man, and Luke lost fucking everything, and you’re lucky you’d already finished with that Arkham woman, because she was not pretty yesterday when they took her back downstairs. I don’t want to talk about it. My last month of work just went totally down the drain.”

Vesca sympathised. “At least you still had all your notes, right?” he asked, and Andrews made a small, distressed moaning sound and thrashed gently from side to side. Vesca stared. “...you lost your files?”

“Didn’t print ‘em,” Gordon confirmed. Vesca winced. Their hard drives had been wiped in the surge. “Ouch,” he said, unhelpfully, and Andrews nodded. Vesca opened his mouth. Andrews beat him to the punch.

“If you say one word about regular printing and filing, Howell, I swear to God I will break this bottle and stab you with the top half.”

That seemed to distract Dee from his conversation with Luke. “Please don’t, Mr Andrews,” he said. “It would make living with him troublesome.”

Gordon snorted. “Wouldn’t help us at the office, either,” he said, and Dee raised his eyebrows, glanced at Vesca for explanation. Vesca huffed out a breath, not quite laughter, not quite annoyance.

“I’m the responsible one,” he explained, and resisted the urge to elbow Dee like a second-grader when the Chinese man’s face became carefully blank.

“Oh, dear,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was as far as the actual plot of the story got before I ran out of sequential bits and just started hammering away to get words, so the next part is a time-skip and a bunch of omakes.


	14. Timeskip

Vesca hadn’t expected to see Agent Reynolds again for some time, but a few weeks after the sea turtle incident, he turned up at the door to the lab with a box and an uncomfortable expression.

“Uh,” he said at first, as though he really, really wasn’t sure how to put this, which gave Vesca the opportunity to be an asshole or have the moral high ground, and he chose the high ground.

“Reynolds. What can I do for you?” Business-like. Brisk. Reynolds look uncomfortable.

“I heard about the waterfront and the turtle,” he said, and Vesca resisted the urge to groan. Dee would never stop causing him trouble, he was sure of it.

“What about it?”

“Well,” said Reynolds, slowly, and shifted the box. Vesca didn’t think it was his imagination when something in the box moved. “As it turns out, your tip about the raccoon hair turned out to be accurate on two counts. One of them was the paintbrushes, and the other was the raccoon. The perp was really attached to it, took it with him on his heists. Apparently it’s really smart.” He coughed. “Anyway, I was wondering. Apparently this raccoon would have to be shipped to Europe to rehabilitate properly, since it’s nowhere near native, and since your, uh, friend,” and he was trying so hard to be politic that Vesca only scowled a little bit when his eyes flickered away, “seemed to like animals so much, I was wondering if maybe...?”

Vesca stared at him. Deadpan. Crossed his arms. “I might take it,” he said. “If you haven’t already killed the thing by shoving it in a box. Bring it in, will you?”

Reynolds followed him into the lab, already babbling gratitude, as Vesca squinted around the lab for a cloth thick enough to protect him from a raccoon if it decided to get nasty. “Am I going to need gloves?”

“Uh,” Reynolds said again, looking shifty. “She doesn’t like me too much, but she seemed pretty tame before we bagged her.”

Vesca grimaced. Dee was the animal charmer, not him. “Well, I’ll see what I can do. Dee’ll want to take her, but we might need a permit…”

Reynolds grinned, relief plain on his face. “Actually, I already sort of half-organised that. I can get you the paperwork this afternoon. Hell, I can even drop it in for you, Howell, you’re a lifesaver.”

“I know,” Vesca sighed. “All right, then, go do that. You’re not going to help her get to like me, and I can’t keep her in the box all afternoon.”

*

He couldn't have kept her in the box all afternoon, but about three minutes after he'd opened the box and found her bristling and snarling in one corner, he was sort of wishing that that was a possibility. He wished briefly for gloves, had to make do with half a sandwich and a leftover biscuit, and a wide petri dish full of water, lowered slowly and unthreateningly into one corner of the box.

"There you go," he told her. "Eat what you want, and come out whenever you're ready." Living with Dee for more than a month had only taught him that animals understood every goddamn word he said, and generally thought better of them - or at least, the crows seemed to have something witty to say whenever they opened their beaks, and D was always talking to the herbs (and lately the tomatoes and the pumpkins and the flower pot in the middle of the coffee table that Vesca pretended he couldn't see slowly bowing obligingly so that Vesca could see the television of an evening), so he figured they had to have something resembling intelligence, even if it didn't quite match up with his kind.

The raccoon stayed still and tense for the better part of ten minutes before the food caught her interest, and he heard her moving around cautiously in the box. He didn't look at her. She'd probably get testy all over again. Instead, he ignored her until she was eating, and then asked, "Better?" She chrrred at him a few times, still bristling, but not nearly as skittish as she'd been before the food. Clearly, she really had been pretty tame before Reynolds had taken her from her owner and shoved her in a box.

"A friend of mine's going to be looking after you for a while," he told her, returning his attention to his files. "His name's Dee. If other critters are anything to go by, you probably know him already." She chrr-chrrred at him again, apparently in response to his words, and when he didn't reply, she made a slightly louder scolding sound. He glanced down to find big pale eyes watching him closely, and he tilted his head. "You can come up if you want. Just don't knock anything over."

He leaned down slowly, dangling his arm just on the inside of the box. The raccoon sniffed cautiously at his fingers, chrrred lowly, and just as her little paws had started gripping onto his sleeve to clamber up his arm, Andrews burst into the lab in his usual hurricane of enthusiasm. "Hey, Vesca!"

Vesca jerked, startled. The raccoon puffed up and shot back into the corner of the box with a screech, taking a decent amount of Vesca's skin with her, and he swore softly as he withdrew his now-bleeding hand.

"Would it kill you to come in quietly for once?" he demanded, and Andrews grinned, and grimaced at the blood.

"Maybe. What've you got there?" He dumped his briefcase, came close enough to see into the box, where the raccoon was spitting with frightened bravado again. "Huh. Cute."

"She's a menace," Vesca decided, already making for the sink. "And so are you."

*

"Oh, aren't you darling," Dee cooed several hours later when Vesca handed him the box. "Hello... oh, Mr Agent, what on earth was that lout thinking of, giving her a box like this? Here," he added to the raccoon, sticking both hands into the box without a second thought, and just as Vesca opened his mouth and raised his hand to halt the action, there was a blur of blond fur up Dee's arm and the raccoon was balled, shivering, clinging to the front of Dee's shirt in the middle of his chest, and Dee stepped back from the box with a melodious laugh.

"There you are, my dear, you are safe, now." He petted the raccoon gently for a few moments, and when her shivering stopped and Vesca threw up his hands, disgusted at how easy Dee had it with possibly rabid rodents, asked, "Now. What shall we call you?"

The raccoon chrrrred, brightly, and Dee smiled. "Pon-chan, then," he decided. "This is Vesca. Let me introduce you to my son..."

"There's a great idea," Vesca muttered from his first-aid kit underneath the sink. "Start the kid out in life with rabies. Fantastic."

"Pardon, Mr Agent?" Dee asked, bright and deadly. Vesca sighed.

"Nothing."

* * *

Vesca glanced up at a knock on his door, called out for whoever it was to come in, and went back to his computer screen. Whoever it was entered quickly and quietly, and stood in front of Vesca's desk waiting politely to be acknowledged, which was not at all the sort of agent that Vesca was used to working with, and made him look up again, eyebrows raised.

The young man was blond and blue-eyed, dressed neatly, hair well-kept, though Vesca had the distinct impression that with a little less care it would be a lot more unruly. His suit was a respectable camel, shirt a pale blue underneath it, tie a wild geometric pattern in subdued colouring. It was his expression and his youth more than anything that pointed him out as a new agent, which explained the polite manner, as well.

"Can I help you?" Vesca asked, and the young man smiled. It was a genuinely friendly smile. Yeesh. Had he ever been that idealistic?

"My name's Orcot, Agent Howell. I'm working on a case with some... interesting blood samples. You're the most experienced man here, and I was wondering if you could take a look at them for me."

Polite. To the point. Flattering enough to catch attention, without being a kiss-ass about it. Vesca was impressed; the kid was a natural. He opened his top drawer, pulled out a card, and handed it to the kid.

"Email me a briefing, then talk to Richards in 6A. He'll keep everything for me. I won't have time for a week at best, but if anyone under me can handle it, I'll give you some names and you can talk to them about it."

Orcot smiled. "Yes, sir," he said, unruffled, and took the card. He set one of his own unobtrusively at the edge of Vesca's desk, right between Vesca's nameplate and the photograph of Dee and D in an armchair, heads together, looking more like siblings than father and son. Then he slipped out again, as unobtrusively as he had entered.

Vesca extended one arm and slid the card closer, so that he could see the name on it properly. Christopher Orcot, huh? Well, maybe he’d make it. Only time would tell. He tucked the card into his breast pocket and went back to his computer, and the list of prospective improvements to the level six labs that he’d be putting to the assistant director in three days’ time.

*

D found the card on his desk a few days later, sitting on top of Orcot’s printed brief. Most parents would probably be a little disappointed to have a thirty year old son still living with them, or mostly living with them, but Vesca was sort of glad that he was, because no matter how attached Dee was to his little menagerie, the poisonous half of it was still slightly unnerving to Vesca. Particularly when they started draping themselves over him and wheedling for food. Fortunately, D was more than helpful in looking after them all – being in charge of the local animal shelter, himself – and if, every now and then, he came home with another stray cat or snake or raccoon, well, Vesca was willing to overlook it so long as the things introduced themselves properly and didn’t go anywhere near his computer or his filing cabinet.

“Orcot?” D queried, leaning against the edge of Vesca’s desk. There was a wren on his shoulder, and Pon-chan was skittering around on the floor beside his feet. Vesca glanced up, and back down again, distractedly.

“Yeah,” he said. “He’s just a rookie, but he’s been assigned with a special agent to a case that’s been open for... most of your life. Murders. Don’t look at the photographs,” he added sternly as D turned to face the desk and rest his hands on the manilla folder. D rolled his eyes.

“Yes, mother,” he said, turning again and examining his nails. Despite his work with animals, he seemed to have inherited his father’s desire to keep them long and perfect at all times. Which fit with fashion at the moment, though Vesca was constantly glad that D was too sensible (or maybe just too disdainful of humans as old as he looked) to wear the tight clothing, leather wristbands and multiple piercings that seemed to go along with the nails and the piercings. “And what is so interesting about these murders?”

Vesca shrugged. “Well, a few of the victims have managed to get a hit in before they died, and the murderer’s not meticulous about cleanup. So we have a few samples of the same blood from a dozen crimescenes over the past fifteen, twenty years, and from what we can tell, the blood’s not human. Or not entirely human.”

D glanced at him, not sharp, but intent, and Vesca shook his head. “Unless he’s part-tiger, it’s not your grandfather.” And with any luck, it never would be. Dee still had nightmares in which D was missing, taken again, far out of Dee’s reach this time. Those nights were no fun. Dee’s dreams tended to linger, and that particular brand of madness had never really left, no matter what they did. It was probably one reason D chose to remain with them, quite apart from his own comfort and companionship. “Although, I am considering asking your father about it. Seems like something he might recognise, even if it can’t help with the case.” Which was a constant frustration to Vesca, knowing... extras, and being unable to present them to anyone simply because what evidence he had for his claims was... unreliable in the eyes of the law, to say the least.

“And Mr Orcot came to you?” D prompted, folding his arms. Vesca nodded absently.

“You’ve got to admire the kid’s guts. Not every day a rookie comes into my office, I’ll tell you. He can’t be much more than twenty, either.”

D smiled. “He must be a remarkable young man,” he said, and Vesca snorted and grinned up at the kid, setting his papers aside.

“You’re not allowed to say that,” he said. “You’re making me feel old.” D fluttered his lashes, just like his father, and made a failed attempt at innocence. Vesca stood, stretched, slung an arm around a son as much his as Dee’s, now, and messed up his hair as thoroughly as possible, to D’s indignant squawking. “When you’re decent again, let’s grab some lunch,” he suggested.

D’s response was language he could only have learned from Vesca, and it made Vesca grin every time.

*

"It sounds like a toutetsu," Dee mused, looking the pictures over without any apparent discomfort. He was animal expert enough that Vesca had been allowed to call him in on casework before, and he figured that any information was better than nothing, even if he couldn't use any of it. Besides, he was curious.

"A what?"

"A toutetsu," Dee repeated. "An ancient beast of China. They are man-eaters, but they have not been seen for centuries... I wonder where on earth this one could have come from?"

"Yeah," Vesca said flatly. "I wonder." Rather than be offended by his suspicion, Dee laughed.

"Vesca, I can assure you that had my father ever seen a toutetsu in the wild, I would have met it long before I left the shop, and I would have been told about it, regardless of our differences. Toutetsu are a priceless treasure in this age, although, of course, impossible to import." He sipped his tea primly. Vesca shook his head.

"This one is only priceless if we catch it," he said. "It's at least one body a month, Dee, and all they have is the blood. And 'legendary beast of China' is sure as hell not going to cut it when they report to the director." He sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, hard. Dee's subtle perfume filled his nose, and he squeezed the hand that slipped into his as Dee pressed a kiss to the side of his neck.

"The toutetsu is a beast with the face of a man," he assured Vesca quietly. "It can move through your society undetected, except for its hunger for flesh. That is why it has always been so dangerous. However, I am sure that you and your young friend can locate it. You are welcome to bring him to me, if you feel he will not be convinced."

Vesca shrugged, letting his hand drop, and turning his face into Dee's neck, resting on his shoulder as Dee's hand came up to play with the hair on the nape of his neck, 'too short' as Dee always complained that it was. Dee was pretty convincing, and the kid seemed like an open-minded sort.

"Maybe," he admitted, grudgingly, and Dee chuckled.

"Is it asking for help that you dislike, or sharing your unorthodox source of information?" he teased, and Vesca chuckled against his neck.

"Bit of both, maybe," he said. "Doesn't matter how many years go by, I still want you all to myself." He kissed Dee's jaw gently, and Dee made a contented sound in the back of his throat.

"How fortunate, then, that I feel much the same way about being shared," he said. "Still, this Orcot fellow... you speak highly of him, for all that you have hardly met. It is rare for someone to impress you so easily, Vesca."

"I know," he said, rubbing his thumbs in small circles on Dee's back. "I'm still not sure whether that means he's actually a nice kid, or just really good at pretending." Like every other agent who walked into his lab. Dee’s fingers scrunched in his hair.

“It is not your job to trust people, Vesca,” he murmured. “But you have always had excellent instincts. Perhaps this is a time to trust in them.”

Vesca was quiet for a long while, mulling it over. Then he made a soft sound of agreement. “Yeah. Maybe you’re right. You’re home in the afternoons this week, right?”

“I need only observe my specimens until noon,” Dee confirmed. Vesca nodded, kissed him briefly, and headed for his desk, and then the phone. Dee leaned back in his chair, eyes warm and lazy as Vesca milled in front of the desk, waiting for the other man to pick up. Greying and slowing and the man was still so terribly impatient. Dee supposed he had the right to be. His was the life running out.

The thought always pained him. He pushed it away.

“Orcot, hey, it’s Howell. Yeah. Thanks. Listen, I might have a lead on your blood work. What are you doing tomorrow, around...” He turned to Dee, raised an eyebrow, and when Dee mouthed the answer, continued, “...three?” Dee mouthed something else at him in the ensuing silence, and Vesca grinned, and turned around so as not to be distracted. Dee pouted. “All right. Drop by the lab then, and we’ll meet my contact.” He resettled the phone, and turned to raise an eyebrow at Dee. “Really?”

“Am I a contact, now?” Dee teased in response. “I suppose there are several points through which we have contact, but I should hope that none of your other ‘contacts’ give you what I do.”

“You’re still the only one who can give me a headache inside thirty seconds,” Vesca said, holding out his hands. “C’mon. I’m sick of my desk. Walk with me.” A winning grin. “Give me a headache.”

Dee smirked wickedly, but chose to take Vesca’s hands and go with him, rather than surrendering to the obvious pun. “It will be my pleasure,” he said instead, and went.

*

Chris was just as pleasant to Dee as he had been to Vesca, not even batting an eye at Dee's choice of attire; after gaining employment and moving into the considerably more tolerant reach of the twenty-first century, Dee had returned to the robes of silk and brocade that suited him best, and generally this earned him a few raised eyebrows when he met new people. Personally, Vesca had been glad of their return; Dee had never really looked right in Western clothing, not unattractive, just not very much himself. He looked much more himself, now, charming and flattering the young agent, and Vesca hung back a little awkwardly, not wanting to just leave Dee with Agent Orcot, but hardly wanting to stand around like an overprotective husband, no matter how accurate that description might have been.

"And you said you had some kind of lead?" Orcot pressed at last, honest curiosity in bright blue eyes. There was one thing that the kid would have to work on, Vesca thought: controlling his facial features. Well, Dee could probably teach him about that, too. Dee glanced at Vesca, raising his eyebrows, and Vesca realised that the question had been directed at him.

"Dee has a theory," he said, shrugging. "It might sound a little off the wall, but his theories are usually correct. And I have to tell you, I've never seen any blood like this before."

Well, maybe once. But he hadn't wanted to study Dee's blood all too closely; he was content to let Dee handle the project, certain that someone centuries older, and so icily intelligent, would do a far better job than some bumbling human. And if Dee had proven anything in his life, he had proven that bumbling, as far as his son was concerned, was intolerable.

Orcot looked to Dee, expectant, and Dee smiled at him. "Do sit down, Agent Orcot," he said. "I have seen blood like this once before... or at least, I have heard and trust in the existence of the creature to whom it may belong." He waited patiently for some kind of smart remark, some kind of outburst, but nothing came. Orcot's face remained interested, polite, and all too ready to hear whatever Dee had to say. "...my, you really do want to catch this criminal, don't you?" Dee murmured, apparently as surprised as Vesca was, and Chris smiled slightly.

"I don't want anyone else to die," he agreed. "Will you tell me about your theory?"

Dee smiled. Vesca thought it might have been the first time he had directed such a sincere smile at a human who wasn't Vesca.

"I believe I will."

*

Christopher Orcot had been expecting a quiet apartment. He hadn’t expected the jars. They were everywhere; Wong hadn’t even bothered to hide them. They lined his room, some filled with vinegar, some packed with what looked like salt, so that Chris couldn’t see what was in them, couldn’t see a dismembered eye or hand or ear. He wasn’t meant to be here yet, but he had a gun, and he’d called for backup. Wong wasn’t meant to be here today; he was meant to be meeting his next prospective victim, but he had returned early, a feral smile on his lips as he’d passed Chris’s car with a heavy-looking paper bag.

And now Chris was inside his apartment, wondering where Wong was. Wondering why he had left the door open. Wondering if this was, technically speaking, the right thing to do, even if Wong had killed more than a dozen people in the last year alone.

He stepped cautiously around a corner, saw a light in what looked like the bathroom, saw movement in a mirror there, and froze. Wong. Eyes fixed on the mirror. Both of them frozen.

Except that when he turned, it wasn’t Wong. Not entirely.

It was something with horns. Curling horns like a sheep’s or a goat’s, but a thousand times more threatening; eyes like the same except that Chris could see the pupils glinting, shining like an oil-slick, like the eyes of some great cat. Wong moved like a predator.

When Dee had said the toutetsu was a something like a hybrid of tiger and goat, Chris had imagined something ridiculous. Something small. This thing was not small. This thing was as tall as him, if trapped in Wong’s body, and it was hungry. Maybe it had only ever been hungry.

Chris’s voice was automatic, faltering, but he got out the words. “Freeze. FBI. You’re under arrest on suspicion of murder.”

The creature – not Wong, it would be so, so dangerous to assume that this thing was Wong – laughed. “I have done no crime. I am not bound by your laws.” It stalked closer, and Chris’s finger tightened on the trigger on his pistol.

“If you come any closer to me, sir, I am authorised to shoot you. Get down on the floor and spread your arms and legs.”

Wong kept moving. Chris backed, cautiously, aware that a slip now could be the end of him. And then Wong tensed. Chris’s finger tightened, eyes narrowing as he tried to put a bullet in the creature’s leg rather than a vital organ, but Wong leapt. Further than any human could possibly have done, mouth gaping as though he would bite before he punched or kicked, and Chris tried to move but Wong plowed into him like a creature five times Wong’s size and sent them both sprawling, Chris’s arms pinned below Wong’s inhuman weight, the other man’s face set in a snarl above him, pinning and pressing, immobilising the agent even as he struggled.

Chris jerked, trying frantically to dislodge the other man without the use of his hands, feeling the gun drop from numb fingers, to sit uselessly (dangerously, his mind supplied) on his stomach, and Wong’s eerie golden eyes above him, slitted and cold. Chris thrashed.

“Get off me!” The creature’s mouth became sneer more than snarl for a moment. Chris made a snarl of his own, more fear than bravado, stress tears welling in his wide blue eyes. “Toutetsu!” he cried. “Get. Off.” The creature’s face froze, its fury halted either by Chris’s vehemence or the sound of a name he must not have heard from another being in centuries. Chris seized his chance. “I know what you are,” he said, swallowing in the face of the beast’s intense focus. “I can see you.”

Golden eyes went from predatory slit to the more docile pupil of a sheep in the space of a few seconds. “You have spoken my name. Your eyes can see me.” A thumb stroked down the side of Chris’s face, from the skin at the corner of his eye to his temple, and the toutetsu made a rumbling sound, ruminating. “You have beautiful eyes,” the creature said, and its face pressed forward, mouth agape once again. “Let me taste—”

The door caved in, and Chris twisted, heard shouts, felt the impact of shots fired slam into Wong’s body. Police poured into the room, not exactly the backup he’d been hoping for, but more than welcome. The toutetsu was bleeding on him, and the blood burned. Chris winced as Wong was hauled off him, shoved back to the floor, cuffed, carted thrashing, screaming toward the door. He had no power against people who couldn’t see him, Chris realised, staring after the furious, writhing, screaming beast, and only snapped back to himself when someone slapped him.

“Chris!” His brother’s voice. Thirty-five and full of a fine gravel, except when he panicked, which was now. It was a roar, now, and Chris had to stare at Leon for a full ten seconds, had to stare until Leon raised his hand, prepared to smack him again, before Chris grabbed at his hand.

“Hold it, hold it, I’m fine.” He scrambled to sit up, scrambled to get to his feet, but Leon held him still.

“You’re covered in blood.” Leon’s tone betrayed his suspicion. Chris raked a hand through his hair, thoughts racing, patting himself down frantically for a cell phone that he didn’t have, that he’d left in case it rang while he was sneaking into Wong’s apartment.

“Leon, I need your cell, I need your cell right now—”

Leon stared at him, pressed it into his hands, hauled him up by his collar. “What’s up?” he asked, nothing of Chris’s professional manner in his tone. The PD didn’t stand for much of that, Chris had learned. If Leon hadn’t been his brother, this case could have been a pain in the ass, simply because Chris didn’t have the cop persona. He grabbed the phone, flipped it open, squeezed his eyes shut tight for a few seconds, mind racing, remembering, and then dialling as fast as he could with shaking fingers, biting his lip, blocking his other ear to concentrate on the sound of the line as he waited, and as soon as a ring cut off, speaking too fast for anyone to possibly understand.

“Agent Howell, it’s Orcot. We have the toutetsu, and I need Dee right now.” Ignoring Leon’s raised eyebrow, ignoring Did you hit your head, bro? His name is Wong. Concentrating only on the number Howell was giving to him, memorising it without writing it down. “Got it. Thanks.”

Hung up. Redialled. Waited.

“Dee speaking.”

“Dee. It’s Chris. Orcot,” he corrected. “We found him. Can you come?”

Silence, for a moment. Then, whispered:

“Where?”

*

D was playing with his cats, Pon-chan in her customary place on his shoulder, chittering away, when his cell phone rang and startled the creatures newer to the shelter into the corners. He sighed, shushed them, thumbed it open lazily, and opened his mouth to answer when, before he could say a word, his father’s voice cut across the line in sharp Chinese.

D’s eyes widened. He slipped away from the cats, hurried down the hall toward reception, speaking lowly to his father, concentrating so hard that when he first spoke to the young woman at the desk, it was also in Chinese. He squeezed his eyes shut, concentrated, shouted behind him as he disappeared out the door—

“Very important! Close up, I won’t be back!”

—and the door slammed shut behind him.

*

Chris was waiting for them all outside the police station, a slightly taller, rougher-looking blond beside him flicking his lighter repeatedly, even though he was already smoking. D arrived first, on foot, a raccoon skittering along behind him. His cheeks were blotched and his skin was pale-- but he was not shaking or dizzied by his flight. That had not happened in some time.

"Dee?" Chris asked, blinking, and then shook his head. "You're his son, aren't you? Your picture's in Howell's office."

"Son?" asked the other man, brows raised, the persistent flick of his lighter stilling for a moment with his skepticism. Chris glared, but didn't have the inclination to elbow him.

"Leon..." he hissed at his brother, and turned to D to apologise, but D was already smirking.

"Did you think you had seen something you liked?" he asked, and did not even wait to hear Leon's choking before he grasped Chris's hand briefly. "I am also called D. My father is not here yet? He said..." He licked his lips, spoke carefully. "You have captured the Toutetsu?"

Chris nodded wearily, passed a hand over his eyes. Leon growled, started flicking his lighter again, blue eyes fixed darkly on D, since he couldn't rightfully glare at his baby brother after a scare like Wong's apartment. "What in hell is this toutetsu everyone keeps talking about?" he demanded. "He's a murderer, and as far as all my records say, his name is Wong."

Chris shook his head frantically. "Not now, Leon. I'll tell you later. It's important. Dee is a specialist, he knows about these things. I told you," he said, tired, angry, kind of wanting to punch his brother and knowing Leon would punch back just to relieve his nerves at this point. D interrupted Leon's reply, waving, calling in Chinese, and Dee and Vesca appeared, the former moving daintily, the latter at a fast, perturbed stride. Dee's hand was outstretched, eyes shining, before he reached them.

"Show me," he said, and Chris turned and led them up the steps quickly, leaving Leon and Vesca to size each other up on their own. After a few seconds, Vesca's scowl relaxed into a more manageable frown, and he shrugged his way past the younger man onto the steps.

Leon stayed there for about twenty seconds, glaring at the street, just long enough for Vesca to reach the door, before he said shit, scuffed his cigarette on the pavement, and jogged up the stairs after the older agent. Vesca eyed him wryly for the few seconds he had to hold the door. "Welcome to the club," he said as Leon passed, and followed the detective to Wong's holding cell.

Wong was there, cuffed securely to a chair, and sitting perfectly still, seething, black eyes staring at the ceiling. But Wong was not all that was there. Vesca could see that, even if he couldn't tell what, exactly, it was. He stepped up between his lover and his son, and took one of both their hands to stop them hurting themselves on their own fingernails. "Is this what you were talking about?" he asked. "The... toutetsu?" He could see it, almost. A faint outline of horns. Red-gold.... something.

Teeth.

Dee's hand tightened on his, and he leaned in closer, taking not only Vesca's hand, but his whole arm. "Vesca, he is beautiful," he murmured, and that was about all that Leon could take.

"He's a fucking murderer," the detective spat. "Chris, I don't know who the hell you've brought in here, but I hope to Christ these bastards aren't the FB-fucking-I."

D's hand was snatched from Vesca's as he turned around, fists clenching at his sides, eyes flashing. "Do not speak of what you do not understand, you foolish, foolish man," he hissed, and Vesca's head snapped toward him, surprised. D lost his temper so very rarely, any outburst was worth paying attention to. Chris stepped towards his brother slowly, both hands out, shaking.

"Leon. Leon, I know you don't get it. I can't explain it to you right now. I will, okay? I definitely will. Right now, you need to let these people do their jobs. All their jobs," he added, glancing at Dee, at D, and back to Leon with more firmness. "Trust me, Leon. Just trust me."

Leon ground his teeth. Closed his eyes. Breathed.

"I'll wait outside," he said, with some effort, and left. Chris turned back toward them, apologetic.

"I'm sorry. He's a little..." He paused to think of an appropriate adjective, and D turned back to the toutetsu with a sniff.

"I would never have guessed that such a man was related to you, Mr Orcot," he said, as though this settled the matter - and for the moment, it did. Vesca took his son’s hand again, rubbing his knuckles, and looked straight at Christopher Orcot.

“What exactly did you bring us here for?” he asked. Chris’s eyes went to the creature behind the bars, and his jaw firmed.

“I don’t think it’s... fair,” he said, voice low enough that his brother could not hear him from outside, choosing his words very carefully. “To sentence an animal with a human crime. He won’t even get the death sentence; he’ll just be classed insane.”

Vesca stared at him, at the rookie with the heart of a lion, and thought, kid, you will never survive.

Dee seemed to think otherwise, though. He seemed to be considering something. “There is a way to draw him out,” he said, barely audible, and Chris’s eyes snapped to him, instantaneous.

“What is it?” he asked, so careful, so determined, and Vesca clenched his teeth. He almost wanted to call the older brother back into the room, but this was the kid’s decision, whatever it was, and Dee had never been the one to let die, instead of save, but he valued human life, now, too.

“Blood,” Dee said softly, and when Vesca glanced at him, he smiled. “It has many uses, Vesca. I told you this long ago. And its truths are always binding. The question will be whether you are strong enough to keep him.” There was an intonation Vesca didn’t like in Dee’s voice, something powerful, something he hadn’t heard in a while. And Orcot was listening. Nodding, just once.

“I’m strong enough,” he said. No hesitation. And Dee reached through the bars of the toutetsu’s prison, and beckoned to the bedraggled man inside.

“Come.”

*

Later, when Chris and Leon joined them for coffee and to pick up his new pet, D, Chris, and Dee took turns explaining to Leon and Vesca exactly what had happened, while the toutetsu lounged across Chris’s lap, occasionally licking his hand. Vesca was resigned. Leon was a little more excitable, but Vesca figured this was normal; he was still young.

“Are you running some kind of fucking serial killer shelter, here, or what?” he rasped, words exploding with such force that they bypassed his voicebox completely and emerged as a harsh rush of air. Chris, at least, had the grace to look embarrassed, although this could have been because the toutetsu had sat up far enough to lick his face, long and slow, and that Chris was perfectly capable of seeing the creature’s form. Dee, Vesca, and D gave each other a sidelong glance over the table. At the same moment, the Chinese men’s expressions glazed over into their standard bright, blank smile. Vesca just coughed to cover his snickering. Leon had no idea.

“Leon, sit down,” Chris said, tugging at his brother’s shirt. “He’s fine now. He’s going to listen to me. We explained as well as we could,” he said, reproachfully, and Leon shook his head, disbelieving, shoulders rounding in something like defeat. He didn’t sit down, though.

“I need a cigarette,” he said, and shoved his chair aside with a screech in his hurry to get outside. The toutetsu, copper-furred, now, and about the size of a great dane, growled as he passed, until Chris tugged at the fur around its face.

“Don’t,” he reminded it, sharply, and the toutetsu subsided, though not without a glance after the elder Orcot that Vesca could only classify as ‘hungry’. “I’m sorry about him. He’s always been a little over-protective, but he’s not that great at... showing it, I guess.”

“There are a number of years between you,” D observed quietly. “Was he a jealous child?” Chris shrugged, awkwardly around the massive creature sprawled across his lap, and grinned, a little lop-sidedly.

“My mom died giving birth to me. My aunt and uncle looked after me, but by the time I was big enough to recognise anyone as anyone... they’d decided to pretend I was theirs, and Leon agreed.” Another shrug. “He blamed me at first, I guess, but... well, eventually I found out. I was so shocked, I lost my voice.” He smiled at them a little. “For three years. My aunt and uncle sent me to Leon. He was meant to take me to a school, but I didn’t want to go, and he let me stay with him, and he’s always been there for me ever since.” His voice had grown more confident as he spoke, and now it was completely certain. “I never would have got my voice back without him. He might not be nice to everyone all the time, but he’s a good guy.”

“He is your brother,” D says softly. “You would think so.” But he doesn’t sound convinced, and when Dee says not necessarily, he nods, albeit reluctantly. “...I think I will speak to him, also.”

Dee and Vesca do not look at each other; they are good parents and good scientists, and they are both well aware of what chemistry is.

Vesca still kind of wants to storm outside and rough Orcot up a little, first, though.

*

When D leaves the house, it is cool and quiet in the garden. It is never cool and quiet in the garden - at least, it is very rarely quiet in any room of their house. They have too many animals. But out here in the courtyard, the smell of smoke, or the ire of a certain detective, seems to have driven them away. D is not sure whether he is grateful, or perturbed. It has been years since there has been cigarette smoke in his home - Vesca has not smoked for the better part of a decade, at both of their behest. But the scents of smoke, of 'dad' (not 'baba'), are intertwined in his head, and some part of him finds the scent of the smoke and his home strangely comforting, even as he wrinkles his nose in distaste.

"It is a terrible habit," he murmurs, and Leon jerks and whirls to face him, scowling, but not saying anything yet. At least, D thinks, the filthy habit is good for something. He bends to set a small bowl on the wall that borders their nearly-neat garden, and straightens again carefully, eyes on the detective, pointedly. Leon nods, his mouth slightly open, smoke trickling out of its corners for a moment before he exhales properly in a rapidly-dispersing cloud.

"Thanks," he says, gruffly.Clearly it is not a word he says often, but just as clearly, he means it when he does. "Expensive, too. But it keeps me sane." He waves the hand without the cigarette in the general direction of the living room, where the rest of the family sits, and then lets the hand drop, without saying another word. Perhaps he feels this is sufficient explanation. D decides not to press him.

"Your brother has a good heart," D says, and Leon snorts out another cloud of smoke. His voice is thick as it trickles out of his lungs with his voice.

"Don't need you to tell me that," he said frankly. "You only met him this afternoon."

D frowned, prepared to be offended. "Actually, my father has been in contact with him for some months. Both of my parents speak highly of him." His voice turns wryly. "More highly than I will be speaking of you, I assure you." Leon snorts again, and D feels a hint of regret at the words. It seems that Leon understands his failings very well, after all.

"Like I said," he muttered. "You don't need to tell me that."

An awkward silence falls. Leon scuffs his sneakers on the courtyard tiles, shifts back and forth while he finishes off his cigarette, sits one foot up on the wall next to D's makeshift ashtray.

"Your parents sure are an interesting pair," he said slowly, muffled again by the smoke. "Where the hell did they meet?" There is a pause that indicates he had been about to make a suggestion, but thought better of it at the last minute.

D considers his options, and for once goes with what is simple.

"College."

"Ah,” Leon says, as if this explains everything, crouching to grind his cigarette conscientiously into the bottom of the bowl. And in a way, D supposes, considering it all, perhaps it does.


	15. Omake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stupid little images that wouldn't stop occurring to me as I was writing the bathroom sex scene.

## Take 1

Dee presses Vesca into the bathroom wall, hands under Vesca's thighs, digging into the flesh, kissing his way along Vesca's collarbone. Vesca's hands are on the towel rack and the sink, and as we watch he lifts his legs, wraps his thighs around Dee's waist. The Chinese man moans, presses forward, stifles the sound in Vesca's neck. The hand closest to us moves, slipping from beneath Vesca's thigh to behind Vesca's back, pressing both men tightly together. Dee's other hand appears, pressing fingers into Vesca's mouth; Vesca's arms are his only means of support, now, and as Dee presses his fingers deeper, they give out.

Vesca swears as they begin to topple, bites down on Dee's fingers inadvertently, and both disappear from the sight of the camera with yelps of pain and indignity. Vesca swears again, and starts laughing, and there come the sounds of Dee swatting him repeatedly on the shoulder-- "It isn't funny, Vesca, you've broken my nail!"

The sound of Vesca spitting something into his hand. "There it is!" 

Either choking sounds, or the sound of someone choking on laughter.

## Take 2

Dee presses Vesca to the bathroom wall. This time he gets as far as sliding his fingers into Vesca before Vesca's grip falters and sends them sliding down the wall. Dee moans; it is not a good moan.

"If all you want is to break my fingers, you could just ask, you know," says his voice, from out of sight of the camera, on the floor.

## Take 3

Dee presses Vesca to the bathroom wall. They are pressed together tightly, moaning, when Vesca tentatively releases both towel-rack and sink and, discovering that he is still upright and blessedly pain-free, wraps his arms and legs around Dee so tightly that the smaller man squeaks, falters, and they both pull away from the wall, eyes wide, but unable to do much more than wait, and fall.

There is a loud thump, and this time Vesca's groan is the loudest. "Oh, for the love of--" The camera shudders for a moment as it is removed from the tripod and lifted aloft, to capture about three seconds of Dee humping determinedly before he cracks up laughing and slumps forward over Vesca's chest. "Wires," he gasps after a moment. "We need wires!"

Vesca seconds this, wincing. "And morphine."


End file.
